Animation Director
The Film School's newest director's programme is aimed at future storytellers. You learn to tell stories through imaginative universes, animation, visual narratives, games, and interactive works and to direct across different formats and media.
The core of the programme is you, your stories, and your artistic expression.
The language is visual and interactive experiences such as animated films and TV series, special effects, games, virtual reality, and stories in new formats that no one knows about yet.
The tool is visualization techniques such as scripts, sound concepts, storyboards, interactive demos, and story worlds.
The director's role is to be a strong creative leader and the master of collaboration. It is your vision that counts, and it is your team that realizes it.
Animation directors typically work in the film, television, and game industry, and the job opportunities for visual storytellers are constantly evolving in a media landscape that is moving from text-based to increasingly image-based and digital.
The programme consists of equal parts teaching and production. In the teaching courses, the narrative is at the centre, and you learn all the film director's core competencies: creative management, dramaturgy, acting direction, sound, editing, and photography. In addition, you will receive instruction in storyboarding, animation, interaction, game design, worldbuilding, management, and production.
Student productions are an important part of the programme. The first major production is in the second semester, where you and a team of film school students and 3D artists from TrueMax3D (Copenhagen Academy of Games, Animation and Visual Effects) make a film that combines 3D graphics and live-action actors. In the third semester, you must direct a team of up to 18 people on an interactive production as part of the DADIU collaboration (The National Academy for Digital Interactive Entertainment). In the fourth semester, you develop a universe (a storyworld) and an animated TV series in collaboration with film school students and CG artists. In the fifth semester, you produce a pilot for an animated TV series in collaboration with students and teachers from TAW (The Animation Workshop in Viborg). Your sixth semester is a semester of reflection, where you explore and experiment with your artistic expression. In the last two semesters, you do your graduation project, where you get resources and facilities to make a full production that can be published and shown in a cinema, on TV and/or online.
The collaboration at the Film School gives you a close and personal network with the school's other students and teachers. You will work with scriptwriters, producers, sound designers, photographers, and editors. Furthermore, you will receive training in e.g., dramaturgy together with i.a. documentary directors and fiction directors.
On the productions, you will also work with actors, designers and, not least, animation and CG artists from the best animation schools. At DADIU, you will, among other things, work with game designers, graphic designers, programmers, and audio designers from the country's largest art schools and universities.
The applicant for the program must first and foremost be a good storyteller. You must have visual talent, be curious, and have a strong desire to create artistic experiences and entertainment across common and future media. To us, the ability to collaborate and the ability to immerse oneself in the work are two sides of the same coin and thus the most important elements for your education.
On the programme, it must be expected that in connection with production and development collaborations, there may be stays of several weeks' duration away from Copenhagen, e.g., in Aalborg and Viborg. During these stays, the Film School covers basic accommodation e.g., in a hostel.