MAKING movies is a serious business, as any Hollywood mogul will tell you. Now, budding Harvey Weinsteins or Jeffrey Katzenbergs can learn how to become a movie hot shot in the UK. Tinseltown is coming to the City of London, as Cass Business School steps into the spotlight with its new Film Business Academy, offering a formal entry route into the film industry for MBA and other postgraduate students. The phrase “the film industry” conjures up images of red carpets and gold statuettes, stars, directors and scriptwriters.
But there is much more to the industry than artistry. To become a successful product a film needs marketing, selling, promoting and distributing. Like any enterprise, it requires talented individuals with excellent business skills.
The new Film Business Academy is part of a £15 million, five-year programme to boost the British film industry. It is being set up with Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the audio-visual industries, and the help of £1 million in funding. Cass is also partnered by the Stern School of Business in New York and Anderson School of Management at UCLA in California.
“Historically, I don’t think there has been enough attention to business skills in the film industry,” says Stewart Till, deputy chairman of Skillset, chairman of the UK Film Council, and chief executive and chairman of United International Pictures, distributors of movies such as War of the Worlds, Madagascar and The Interpreter. “If we can have a workforce that is well educated in the business aspects of the industry, then we can achieve greater success on a worldwide basis.”
Cass plans to run programmes for a range of participants. These include full and part-time specialist masters degrees, a specialist Executive MBA, and a number of short courses. MBAs are expected to get in on the act later this year.
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For full-time MBA students wanting to work in films, specialist electives will provide a postgraduate education to fast-track them into a successful career. “MBA students can take electives in four areas,” says Professor David Sims, Cass director of MBA Programmes. “These are film financing, film distribution, film PR and marketing, and international co-operation.”
Perhaps one of the biggest attractions of the course is the entry route it provides.
“The film industry is really difficult to get into,” says Till. “It is often who you know that gives you the breaks, and that puts a lot of very good people off. The beauty of the academy is that it will attract the brightest students, because if they do the degree they will be in the spotlight and will get recruited.”
Cass is not the only UK business school focusing on the media. The Said Business School at Oxford held its first annual two-day International Media and Communications Summit last year. It is part of the school’s drive to deliver the first media-focused MBA programme in the UK.
Students on the one-year full-time Media MBA take specialist electives in media and communications. They also work on media-related consultancy projects. “The specialist MBA is designed to provide aspiring media professionals with management knowledge at a time when the industry is becoming increasingly global and undergoing major change driven by new technologies,” says Jonathan Black, director of corporate relations at SBS.
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“The great thing about the film business is that it is all about the quality of the people who work in it,” says Till.
“If we end up with better educated people in the British film industry, I honestly believe it will make a difference.”