James Walker is the co-founder of Young Film Academy (YFA), one of the UK's leading filmmaking organisations for young people. For over 20 years, James and the YFA team have helped thousands of teenagers develop storytelling, communication, leadership, teamwork, creative confidence and practical filmmaking experience through hands-on outreach projects, workshops and their flagship residential summer programme.

YFA's philosophy is simple: the best way to learn is by making films. James has a wealth of knowledge and passion to share about helping young people discover their creative potential, pathways into the creative industries and how filmmaking can build the most essential skills for the modern world.

Key takeaways

1. Storytelling is the way in. Film is just another medium for telling stories, and that skill matters in every career.
2. Passion starts early. We expect athletes and musicians to start young, so take young people’s creative interests just as seriously.
3. Ownership beats instruction. No student is handed a script. They write their own and care far more about the result.
4. Real humans, real spaces. Doing a hard creative task in person builds the “four Cs and an R”: confidence, communication, collaboration, creativity and resilience.
5. Learn from the edit. Students cut their own films, so they see their own mistakes and learn from them.
6. Resilience isn’t a poster word. Every film goes through excitement, a dark patch, then “we actually did it”. Getting through it is what resilience means.

Chapters:

• 00:25 - Learning by Making: The Young Film Academy's Philosophy
• 01:26 - Origins of the Young Film Academy
• 10:54 - How to Get Involved with Young Film Academy
• 18:37 - Summer School: Structure, Roles, and Hands-On Learning
• 25:35 - A Student's Journey: From Ballet to Film (Project Paradiso)
• 27:30 - The Young Film Academy Podcast — Opening Eyes to Film Careers
• 34:21 - FIRE — Feedback, Inspiration, Resilience & Empowerment
• 40:45 - Conclusion — Impact, Learning, and How to Find Young Film Academy

https://www.youngfilmacademy.co.uk/

https://www.youngfilmacademy.co.uk/podcast/

@youngfilmacademy

🔥 Discover more about Education on Fire, get a FREE pdf of 10 guest resources.

https://www.educationonfire.com

🔥 Support the show – Buy me a coffee, Merch and Sponsorship Opportunities

https://www.educationonfire.com/support

#EducationOnFire

Show Sponsors –

National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Their Primary First Journal: https://www.educationonfire.com/nape

English Program for Kids – Night Zookeeper

• Award-winning reading & writing program for ages 6-12
• Improves vocabulary, spelling, grammar & more
• Personalised feedback on your child’s work

http://educationonfire.com/nightzookeeper

Hello, welcome back to Education on Fire.

Today I'm delighted to be chatting to James Walker and he's the co founder of the Young Film Academy, one of the UK's leading filmmaking organizations for young people.

Now, for over 20 years, James and the team have helped thousands of teenagers develop storytelling, communication, leadership, teamwork, creative confidence and practical filmmaking experience through hands on outreach projects, workshops and their flagship residential summer program.

Now, the Young Film Academy's philosophy is very simple.

The best way to learn is by making films.

And James has a wealth of knowledge and passion to share about young people and how they are helping discover their creative potential, pathways into the creative industries, and how filmmaking can build the most essential skills for the modern world.

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all.

Hi James, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Fire podcast.

This is something slightly different than I think we've covered before in terms of actually having a program of film related things supporting young people.

So first of all, tell us, what is it that you do and how did sort of the Young Film Academy get going?

So the Young Film Academy was co founded by myself and Ed Boase 22 years ago and we were at the time filmmakers working in the industry and the digital revolution had just happened.

So when we first started out thinking about sort of the next generation of filmmakers, and we were young filmmakers ourselves, but when we started thinking about that, there was just a, a means of production issue, you know, who, who has a camera?

I remember us going to schools right at the very beginning and it was like, who has a camera?

And out of 150 students in the room, there'd be two hands would go up and we used to say, okay, great, so you can all borrow one of them.

It was that idea which of course never really practically happens and then you know, say what do you shoot on?

What can you edit on?

All that stuff.

And then suddenly the digital revolution happened and the ability for people to have some kind of device that they could film on and some kind of editing program all became so much more readily available.

But we were very aware that there was no place for young people under 18 who were really serious about this, who wanted to develop their skills and who thought that they had a real kind of taste for storytelling and wanted to get into film or television or related industries.

There was nowhere where they could go to, to learn those skills with practical equipment that they could make something they could be proud of, with people who would help them and look after them and mentor them to meet like minded young people.

I mean, there was just nothing at the time out there and Ed and I had actually had a.

Our origin story is we made our first film when we were 17 years old and we were fortunate that our school had a.

Had a VHS camera.

In those days at people remember VHS tips belong a lot of young people out there who've never seen a VHS tape, but this was a pretty old technology and they had a VHS camera and.

And we took a punt.

We actually wrote a letter to Desmond Llewellyn, who is Q from the Bond films.

People will remember him for that, the guy with the gadgets.

And we, we asked him just, I mean, we were schoolboys, literally we wrote the letter and said, would you.

Would you be in our movie?

Essentially?

And miraculously it turned out he really didn't do very much apart from he did three Days on Bond and then he lived in Bexhill on Sea.

And we gave him the chance to play the devil, so he thought that was great fun.

So he actually came and was on set with us for a day.

So we were these schoolboys with the only kid in our class who understood how to use his VHS camera.

A terrible script that I'd written, some terrible acting and I was one of the actors, Ed directed it and we made this half hour thriller called Taboo that we then had a premiere at the cinema.

We rented a local cinema for 120 quid and we put the banner out the front and we invited all our friends.

Desmond Nolan came and sort of.

So we.

And that kind of launched us to some degree in our careers.

And so I think we were always very.

We were very attuned to this idea that which is one of the.

Now the one the young film academy philosophies, which is, you know, passion for the things you will excel at, starts early.

You know, we were really struck by that.

And so 22 years ago, if you wanted to be a leader in this industry, if before you were 18 there was just nothing that you could do, and we looked at that and we thought, well, this is madness.

I mean, you know, if you look at world leaders in music, sport, for instance, I mean, the idea that you're going to have a gold medalist and you say to them, so when did you start?

And they go, well, I was kind of 19 when I started the idea of this you just be like, what are you talking about?

This is crazy.

You need to start at 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 is late by most standards.

And so that the idea of Young Film Academy was born, the idea that we would take seriously the idea of helping and providing exactly that for you young people under the age of 18.

So we work with an 8 to 17 age range.

Sometimes we have done parties, so that, that takes us down to five, which really is a young start.

And we did a BBC tour with five year olds.

But we, we tend, our heartland age is usually about 10 to 17.

And we provide all sorts of programs and courses and events and partnerships that allow young people to come and learn practically how to make films.

And everything we do is incredibly practical and hands on.

And I love the fact that you, you started the whole thing talking about storytelling and, and that essence of what that is, because I think maybe some people would just think, okay, so film.

So therefore we're going to start with, you know, where we're going to be focusing, what button to press, what, that sort of thing.

But I guess that's really not the basis of what it is that people engage with to begin with.

Yeah.

So I think storytelling is often the first way in and film is just another way to tell stories in.

And my background is through.

I started in theater and as a screenwriter and a producer and I'm passionate about telling stories.

That's what excites me, gets me up in the morning.

And so filmmaking for a lot of young people is just another medium they can experiment with.

But over time it has become the dominant medium.

So now you have an incredible reach.

You can tell these stories and young people can then send them all over the world at the click of a button.

And they can have a portfolio and they can build up their skills and share them in a way that, for instance, in theater it's actually very hard to do that.

You know, it's very hard to film theater in any way that's well or justifies it.

The performance when, when you're there live.

And film has that amazing ability to, to tell your story and then share it across the world for free at the click of a button.

Which is another thing that has empowered the students at Young Film Academy is, you know, in the 22 years we've been going, it's gone from, you know, sending a vhs, which is what we were doing, you know, literally sending VHS out in envelopes through to now literally sharing that all over the world to all sorts of people who might be interested, work at the click of a button.

So yes, I think storytelling is, is absolutely key and there's a fundamental skill that young people need to learn whatever careers they go into.

So it's not, it's not about just the film industry per se or related industries.

You know, this idea of telling audio visual stories is going to be absolutely key whether whatever business people or job people go into.

And I just want to take you back to that.

Having done your own first sort of production, as it were, and then hiring the local cinema, I.

That just sounds amazing.

Is it something you can still do now if you have a local cinema?

Oh, absolutely.

But just, just tell me that process because that, that seems like a big jump between like you say, I'm just going to sort of make it for ourselves and then actually being able to put it on the big screen and get people to come and watch.

So technically that you can just hire a cinema.

I mean you can go to whatever your local view, Everyman, Odeon, whatever it is and you can ask for an hourly hire on their smallest screen and depends who you are, what you're doing and what time, because obviously the price depends.

If it's Saturday, you want to do it at Saturday at 8 o' clock in the evening, then they ain't going to cut you a deal.

But if you're sort of doing it at Sunday morning at 11 o' clock when frankly there's some tumbleweed blowing across the screen three, you'll be surprised at the kind of things that, that they will do to help and support upcoming filmmakers.

So that's what we did.

We, we hired it.

We, I think we did on a Sunday morning, sort of mid morning and it didn't cost the earth and we got to put the, the sort of the name of the.

The movie up on the front banner and invited people and I suppose what, you know, there's a fake it till you make it element to all of that as well.

But I think it's also just believe, believe in yourself and just enjoy the human experience of that.

You know, it was a magical day and you know, we had 250 people and everyone came and it felt like a real event.

And I think young people need to sometimes believe in themselves.

Take that punt and.

And also increasingly do things in the real world because those are the experiences that really bond everyone.

You know, you, yes, sure, you could do a YouTube premiere and maybe you'll get lots of clicks, but I'm not sure actually how much that benefits you.

Where if people can, you can get people to a physical space to look you in the eye and shake your hand and they'll remember it, and it's part of the tapestry of their actual life.

I think the chances of it propelling you to whatever you want to be the next thing is much more likely.

Yeah, I, I completely agree and I think as a musician myself, that kind of.

I've done this rehearsal, we're doing a concert, people have come to see it, and you have that reaction and all of that.

That's very different than like, say, just recording something in your, in your practice room and then sending it out or something.

That there's so much more to it than that.

And I think the other key thing you said, which I think was so important is that experience isn't it?

You can only know what, what you feel, what you've experienced, what, what you can then aspire to, because you can sort of see all of those sort of next stepping stones.

Even if it's, you know, not a red carpet event.

But for you, it really is a red carpet event because you've taken all of those steps, you understand the process, and then it's just a question of expanding that, I guess, into whatever that next project is and as it sort of grows and takes off from there.

Yeah, I think, and I think that's all true and I think we've always been very aspirational at Young Film Academy.

You know, we've really said aim high and dream big and, and reach for the stars.

And that's sort of always been in terms of both the quality of productions, what young people can achieve and, you know, the track record of films made at Young Film Academy by students which have played in international festivals all across the world.

And some of our students had the most amazing journeys with their work and gone to these events and been platformed to achieve incredible things already within the industry is, is testament to that.

So let's talk a little bit about the different ways that people can get involved.

Like, I know at the minute you're in the middle of the sort of summer residential courses, but I know there's sort of, there's more to it as well.

So sort of give us each of those touch points and then sort of how and why people then get involved and, and take part.

So over the years our programs have evolved and we have, we've done a lot of things with a lot of people.

I mean, we've actually, we've helped in our 22 years more than 275, 000 young people make films in that time, which Fills Wembley three times, which is a kind of bonkers thought.

Predominantly our programs divide into two departments if you like.

One is a schools, what we call our schools department and the other rather creatively we call our non schools department.

What that, what that means is our schools department goes into about 200 schools a year, predominantly in the UK but some within Europe and some outside of Europe.

And we go in on a day which is a normal term time day during school term.

And we take staff and the equipment that is required for us to usually take a whole year group off timetable and deliver a program called the one day Film School which we like to think of as the shortest film school in the world.

It's incredibly practical.

The, the students are kind of on a honor, on a date.

It's often used by schools for bonding new new intake or, or during an enrichment or arts weeks or activities or sort of post exam time, getting students to work in teams.

And then they have to make films.

They make 10 shot films to a clear sort of pattern that we have.

And we bring all the resources and all the presentations to take them through film history, fight choreography.

They will have a go at throwing a mock punch.

It's a lot of fun.

We've always said it's the most fun you can have at school legally we like to say.

And at the end of the day there is a film festival of all the films that students have produced and an award for the best picture.

And then sometimes the school will go on and actually host a sort of gala, gala awards dinner after that.

And there can be kind of, they can build on that platform and then we have a follow up program called the Sequel which will go back and do a similar thing.

So that's kind of one strand of our work.

We also work on prospectus films which is helping schools to produce essentially the kind of film that many schools will have to sort of market themselves.

But our take on that is we help the students produce that film and it's, it's a brilliant program because there is a cookie cutter nature to those films for schools.

They tend to all look the same.

They're produced by private companies who sort of almost one science teacher once said to us they needed the Bunsen burner set to exactly this.

And when asked why they said that's just because of what we do on every film.

Whereas what we'll do is we'll work with the students of that school to, to actually crew and shoot and edit that film.

And so it feels much more genuine and authentic to the school.

Whilst preserving really high end production values which is what the school's worried about essentially because the school is all in favor usually of the students doing it, but they're worried it needs to look brilliant and sound great and, and, and sort of have those production values.

So we guarantee that.

So I think it's, it's a brilliant package.

So those are the sort of our main schools programs and then we do for kind of outside of school on flagship program is our residential filmmaking and screen acting summer camp which is happening right now.

And in fact I was there on site yesterday where we screened 14 films which were made last week and there's another 16 which are being made this week because we have some students who come for two weeks and some who just come for one.

So the one week has had their screening and then this week the two week films are shooting and the one week film.

So at the end of this week we will have 16 films screened on the on site cinemas.

And it really is the most intensely practical filmmaking experience that you can have in the world for anyone aged 13 to 17.

And we have students who travel from all over the world to attend to do this and they, and they land and they are passionate and they meet their like minds and suddenly they, they're the only one in their friendship group who cares about movies of this much.

And suddenly they land.

There's 150 and they go oh my God, these are my people.

And the work they produce is absolutely stunning and has gone on to do amazing things at film festivals across the world.

So it's a, it's a really great program.

So that's sort of our flagship program where people sort of sign up and can come.

We then do a lot of partnership work.

So organizations will say for, give an example, last year we had BAFTA and EE wanted to do a project which tied into EE sponsorship of the baftas as in the big film awards.

And the idea was to help a group of young people age 16 to 19 to write and then shoot a, a movie with professional actors, a short film that went on to a life online under E's auspices.

So essentially we were brought in as the experts of working with young people to design that program, facilitate that program.

And then we ran that program for all the pre production, the writers room with the students and then the actual shoot, which was a six day shoot and all the training that goes with that, the equipment and then the post production, I mean that was an amazing.

We actually, David Johnson, who's just been cast as the new Black Panther, he Came and met our students.

We had a couple of students interviewed on Radio 1 at lunchtime which was slightly crazy about that.

And.

And then the film's gone on to have a life.

It's called Setting Sail and it's a, it's a really fantastic piece.

So we do that kind of thing.

We did a tour for the BBC a few years ago again where they wanted to do a tour of nationwide tour for young people.

And again they didn't really have the qualification, I didn't the expertise to work specifically in this way with young people that obviously we do bear in mind all the safeguarding things that need to be in place and the technical knowledge because that's what's difficult in this area, you know, is pretty technical and you need a whole combination of skills.

So we did a tour for the BBC where we went around in BBC T shirts and everyone thought it was the BBC and it was Young Film Academy.

So we do that.

We, we partner with charities, partner organizations.

People will come to us and say we really want to do a, a workshop as part of festival.

We worked recently, worked with the making festival up in Blackburn.

Yeah, recently we work with, you know, young deaf people, all sorts of, you know, projects on a one to one basis where a client will come and say we'd like to do this.

How?

What, what could we do?

And how could we do it and could you do it?

So we, we do bespoke, lots of that kind of bespoke work.

The final thing we have done, which we did for three years is currently on a pause.

But it was magical project as we selected the best Young Film Academy students from all of our programs across the year and that who are over 16 and we offered them a chance to fundraise Virus or Crowdfund campaign and then to write and then shoot a movie in Sicily which was called Project Paradiso.

And that happened for three years and the films that they made out there won some very high end equipment and there was 24 young people involved in each of those projects and those films went on to lives on the festival circuit and one of them in fact won about 18 international awards.

And those young people are now doing amazing things.

So that was a great springboard project.

Well, I love all of that and I love the, the ability for people to, to have different touch points.

Like I say with you're going into a school and then for your touching someone who maybe hasn't even thought about film or had that experience before they can go on as opposed to the people like you Say who must have some kind of passion that's come from somewhere that they're prepared to then come and do the summer course and like say meet those like minded people.

I sort of love all aspects of, of that kind of thing.

From a completely outsider's point of view, let's take the, the summer school as an example.

I guess everybody has a range of skills and a range of sort of parts of this which they, they're passionate about.

So I guess just take us through a little bit about what that might look like.

You know, like say whether it's the storytelling, the script writing, the, the actual using the camera, the sound, all of that sort of stuff and how that might work for different people and.

And then it's sort of a whole project.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think that we've always taken a very collaborative view from a sort of.

Because we're an organization where professional filmmaking and the film industry meets the world of education.

Films can be quite hierarchical.

You know we, we kind of, they, they can be quite director led, quite top down, a bit of a divorcing and everyone's quite strict about which roles they are and credits and all of that stuff.

That's definitely not been our vibe at all.

We really believe in, we believe in ownership for the young people.

So no at Young Film Academy no student was ever been given a script by us and said make this film.

That actually is very hard to do because you're always starting from a creative zero, a blank page.

But when you help the young people through the creative journey so they always self author and write their own scripts.

When they make those films they feel so much more engaged about them because they came up with them.

It was everything that is that, that ownership as opposed to.

I really like this film but essentially it just came off a professional writer who just provided the script at the beginning of the course.

So I think that's the first thing to say.

Most of our programs, certainly our residential filmmaking and screen acting summer camp for ages 13 to 17, we divide into two age groups, 13 to 14 and 15 to 17.

And in those two age groups the students apply for either the screen, the acting, screen acting crew or the filmmaking crew.

So that's the first division.

So we have those students who just maybe have done a lot of theater before or a little bit of film.

You know it's quite difficult to get film acting experience.

It really is.

And they embark on a series of workshops, learning kind of live camera pickups to big screens and on site cinemas where they can kind of immediately see what it is to act on screen.

And it's always hands on and straight, you know, up on its feet.

So they develop those skills and then they do casting tapes where.

Which are given to the filmmaking crews who are tasked with coming up with a story that will feature the actors.

And they know which actors they have to write for.

And then they are shown the locations available to them.

We work at, we're based at Culford School in Suffolk which is this unbelievable 400 acre site which is absolutely brilliant.

And they are so passionate about partnering with us on this mission.

They care very much about it.

And so they give us access to some amazing locations across the site.

And then they.

So they write their scripts as a team in terms of the filmmaking groups.

Then they.

When they do the sort of the actual shoot and the skills based workshops, what you often find is that they kind of naturally gravitate.

You know, there'll be some in a group who just a bit more interested in camera than sound or a bit more interested in directing or a bit more interested in being a first AD or you know, so you have a bit of that.

We do try and rotate.

So everyone gets sort of a bit of a go at everything.

And we try not to let everyone sort of hog a particular skill and everyone, you know, because you often get students who go, I never thought I was interested in sound, for instance, but I loved recording sound.

It was completely magical or focus pulling or whatever it might be.

So the team is a sort of collaborative team for the production.

Although you will end up, as I say, with certain students doing more of a certain thing because they have either a greater propensity or interest or sort of experience.

And then in the editing again, we really believe in letting the students edit their own work.

We think that that is so important to understand the mistakes because they often get to the edit suite and go, God, I should had a close up of that thing, I can't see it.

And oh, why didn't we get the reverse angle?

Why does that look weird?

Because I did this thing called Crossing the Line.

What is Crossing the Line?

You know, and they learn all that on the hoof and then sometimes they have to do pickups if there's time.

So they will go and reshoot and get the shots and.

But that's an integral part of the process to learn from the edit.

I think if you take that away from them and just show them the finished film, they don't have that learning journey.

So they always edit their films again as a team and then so that they will all be credited.

So we don't.

At the end of a Young Film Academy film, it doesn't say directed by camera by, it will just say, you know, a film by.

With the names of the students who have been in and then starring with the names of those students.

So it's quite a collaborative enterprise.

And it a funny story about that we actually had earlier this year we did an event called the Young Film Academy Awards All Stars, which was a culmination of 10 years of young Film Academy Awards, which happens in Leicester Square at the end of eat kind of year of ours.

So that's early September.

So it's like a calendar educational year.

And the Young Film Academy Awards has over time celebrated the best films made at Young Film Academy in each of our types of programs.

And so the all Stars was.

Was pulling them all together and going which are the best of all with the last 10 years.

And so we, the films were nominated across all of the nominees from the past 10 years.

And then we had some incredible judges.

So we had Eddie Hamilton, who's the editor of Top Gun, all the Top Gun Maverick and all the Mission Impossible films.

And he came presented on the awards and he called me and he's.

He was a bit confused by the whole credits thing because he was looking at some unbelievable films and he was so blown away.

But he's like, I don't really understand, like it just who was the director, who was the.

And I explained it didn't really work like that.

And he just couldn't get his head around that, that these young people were able to collaborate in this way because of course in the film industry it would be a nightmare.

You know, everyone would be fighting and bickering.

And so I explained that it wasn't really like that and he loved it.

So, yeah, it's a very collaborative process, but we allow students to develop skills in the kind of areas that they want to.

There's very few students, we have them who just go, I.

All I want to do is camera.

You know, that happens.

But mostly they come often thinking they want to write a direct and then they actually go, oh, do you know what?

I loved another skill.

And I guess that's the thing, isn't it, about that introduction to these things and certainly that age group, you know, the whole world is opening up to you and you can only know what you.

What you can see, what you can touch, what you can smell.

And so like you say, what you actually think you want to do may be different.

I Mean, from my experience, it was that kind of, you know, I started learning music and I was a drummer because that's how you started.

And then suddenly this thing like an orchestra suddenly appeared and there's timpani and tune percussion and all that sort of stuff.

And you're like, ah, okay, this isn't what I thought, but I get the understanding and the effects of that.

And, you know, that became my career.

I would have never have had that if, you know, you were telling me at 12 years old that was the case, but at time I was 14, 15, having been on a course, having had some of that sort of professional learning experience through different sort of mechanisms as I went through it really just changed my perspective, even though it was in the same field.

Yeah, I completely agree.

It's actually a lovely story of a, of a female student.

And we are, we're delighted because obviously, you know, making sure that there is gender parity is a big topic in the film industry.

And we are delighted that the Young Film Academy, we have more female students than we have male students.

And that's, we're very proud of that.

And we had a.

A wonderful female student who got selected on a Project Paradiso a couple of years ago.

And her personal story was that she'd actually always want.

She was a very good ballet dancer and she had always assumed that she would have a career as a ballet dancer.

And then she'd had an accident when she was about 16, 17 and was told that she basically will never dance ballet again.

And this young lady had a real low moment and she'd separately come on a Young Film Academy course.

She'd come to our residential camp and it turned out that unbeknownst to us, we had no idea this was happening.

We had selected her for, to offer her place on Project Paradiso, the project I told you, where we take the students to Sicily.

And, and it's a very select group of kind of students who really excelled.

And she told me later that that email, she was in a very dark place.

And then the email came in saying, you know, you've been selected for this.

And she said it just zapped her out of her malaise and she suddenly thought, you know what?

Film is something I've always been super interested in.

And so she came on that Project paradise and she just happened to be the most amazing focus puller and I was.

And the industry does not have enough female focus pullers.

It's a very technical and very demanding job.

And we have these huge monitors on set and this Remote focus wheel.

And I remember being on set in Sicily watching this young lady just absolutely hitting every single mark.

And the filmmakers who are mentoring were like, she's just got it.

I mean she's an absolute natural and she's now moved on and is doing that professionally.

So it's, it's a very special thing when people kind of discover a thing that they didn't know they, as you rightly say, that they loved.

And I suppose, sorry to plug our own podcast for a second.

That's the purpose of the Young Film Academy podcast, which is a podcast that goes out on all networks, completely free, no advertising.

And we, we really try and touch on all the aspects of the film industry and behind the scenes and finance and legal and music and copyright and all the things, because young people can listen to that and, and it opens their eyes to all these different things that they probably had no idea even existed within our various kind of multi layered industry.

And I guess it just made me think there in terms of the skills that people learn from the courses and from the experiences that they're doing because like I say, you have all this technical stuff and you've got all the things related to what they're there to Lear, but I guess the social skills, the working together, all that sort of thing just literally takes off when you're in that kind of environment.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, absolutely.

And I was there yesterday giving an address to all the, all the parents come at the end of the first week of our residential camp and they come to watch the films in the on site cinema and it's absolutely magic and the atmosphere is electric and we've got hundreds of people in the room and I talk about exactly this and in fact, you know, as an, as someone in, interested in education, you know, I'm sure you'll, you'll see this too, but I actually said, I think this residential camp for Young Film Academy is perhaps the most important that we've ever done for the simple reason that it is not a virtual learning, it is not an online curriculum.

This is young people who travel from all corners of the UK and all corners of the world and do the hard thing in today's world of physically getting there right with the cost and expense and all the things that one has to, to do that.

And then they look another human being in the eye who they never met before and they have to sit there and do a very hard creative task, instantly come up with things, be creative and then go through the whole journey of making that film with all the ups and all the downs.

But in the real world, when it's hot and it's, you know, or it's cold or the, the thing breaks or whatever.

The thing is in today's world where I think as educators we are all concerned that young people are becoming increasingly, you know, hiding behind screens and being divorced and isolated by technology, what we do, you know, we very consciously lent into that is to aggregate real humans in real spaces to do really human things.

And so therefore it brings about the team always rhythmically actually.

Because, you know, in corporate world you always want sort of five C's right?

And I've always had four season and R. But we always talk about, we talk about confidence.

So the experience builds such confidence.

So in fact we had just students at the beginning of last week.

On any residential program you always.

The first 48 hours is where you kind of.

If students get through the first 48, they're going to be great.

But some students have never been away from home before and it's a big deal and they come and it's the Young Film Academy and it's a big thing and they get a bit nervous.

And obviously our staff are incredible.

We have a wonderful social staff and pastoral care staff who work with these students and, and encourage and help them.

But some of them do find the first bit a bit wobbly.

And then suddenly if we can help them through that, which we, we always do, you watch.

By the end of the week their confidence levels have just.

And a lot of student of parents write to us and say, I don't know what you did, but my, my son or daughter in the car back just there was a, just different feet.

They felt an inch taller.

And, and I think it's, it's partly to do with all of the things we've been discussing.

So the confidence is a big one.

Communication they have to which many parents know, you know teenagers, communication isn't necessarily their strongest skill.

But they can't hide in our residential camp.

They can't hide in their room, they can't hide behind messages.

You know, they can't, they have to be in a room with others going, okay, what's the problem?

How do we solve this?

And creative problem solving is a big part.

So that communication talking.

And of course all our staff are on radios.

We have on one production day at summer camp.

We actually have 14 films in production on a single day across a 400 day a site.

So you can imagine the kind of communication that's required to, to get that.

But it's A great vibe.

So communication is big collaboration.

So that sense of teamwork, working with each other, doing that hard thing of sort of saying, I think that's a really good idea, but.

Or.

And you know, and sort of doing that thing which sometimes young people find tricky, but not sort of coming in hard going, I hate your idea, I want to do mine.

And having to temper all of that stuff and work to a shared objective creativity.

So, you know, there's a lot of.

I think we always say, if you actually put adults, if you've got a group of adults and ask group of adults to do what we ask these students to do, I. E. It's Monday morning, you don't know each other, there's eight of you, seven of you, whatever.

You've got basically a day and a half to come up with a script.

You've got a day to learn the skills, and then you've got a day to practice, a day to shoot and data, a day and a half to edit.

Adults would just be sort of paralyzed.

And we've done this.

We've actually done corporate workshops with, With.

With adults.

And they do find it much trickier.

Whereas young people, we really encourage them to be creative and sort of to let that.

That creative outlet and when they really grasp the nettle with that.

So creativity, and then the R is resilience, which is a big one.

And I was talking to students yesterday and I said, you know, there will be many of you who at some point this week or across these two weeks genuinely thought, this ain't gonna happen.

You know, this film will not get made.

For whatever reason, we've fallen out as a group.

Someone got.

Our main actor suddenly got sick.

We don't have enough.

We're too far behind schedule.

We're never going to finish in the time, whatever it might be.

And then they come through that and then they get the edit and then they're like, oh my God, we're gonna do it.

And then they.

And then when they hit the sunny uplands of triumph at the end, the fact that they've been through that journey, and same with every film ever made, I mean, every film, professional film production I've ever been involved in, it's the same journey.

It basically goes, we're super excited about this.

This is going to be amazing.

Oh, my goodness, this is harder than I thought, oh, my goodness, what have we got ourselves into?

Oh, no, we're never going to get this done.

This is a disaster.

Fight through the dark period.

Come on.

Oh, my God, we're going to do it.

This is going to be amazing.

Wow.

We actually did it.

I can't believe we did it.

Wow.

Aren't we proud of what we've achieved?

The same journey over and over again.

Whether it's Christopher Nolan's odyssey or, you know, or, or a young film academy film, it's the same journey.

So I think that, that the resilience, where we say, we're not going to solve your problems, you know, if, if you, if you fight and bicker and don't come up with a script, we're not going to write it for you.

And if you don't shoot the shots to tell your story, we're not going to shoot those shots for you.

So by giving them that sense of responsibility, it makes that overall sense of resilience, when they come through it, I think very, very important and very kind of valuable for them.

I love that.

And normally towards end of the podcast, we go to the acronym, and obviously that's feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment.

And I just love today that that's been an integral part of what it is that you do and an essential part of the whole program.

And I think to be able to sort of, of see and hear that based on, on the stories that you've, you've said is so really, really important.

And as a musician, I also really love that sense of what you said about the journey being the same.

I mean, I've had it in my professional experience.

You know, it's like you've done the rehearsals, it's been in stage, in orchestra, the afternoon before the first night.

You're thinking this is never going to happen because they still haven't got the lighting sorted, the sound or whatever it happens to be the first night happens.

Everyone's really happy, week in, week out, touring, the whole thing.

But I think from a learning point of view as well, it's something that I really try and get across to my pupils, that once you understand the process and the learning process and the, the sort of, the way all this works, you become resilient, but also you kind of rest into what it is that you know will be the case.

So I say, look, I still have to practice in the way that I'm.

That we're discussing here.

You know, it's something new.

It's tricky.

I'm going to do it slowly I'm going to repeat it when I think I know I'm going to do it another hundred times and going to add the music or the backing track or we're going to be doing it in an orchestra.

But the same process happens to me, you know, 25 years after I started my professional career as I'm telling you now, you know, as a 10, 11 year old, you know, having a lesson in your school because this will then benefit you when you go and do orchestra next week or wind band there or the chance to do a multi school project or whatever.

And, and when you start think oh right, I see that.

So then the next time the standard might be higher, the people around you might be more like minded but the process is the same.

And then you start to think now I've got the skills that I know I can grow into, the environment might change but I'm really learning all the time and just growing into, into the thing I'm really passionate about.

And I guess that's the key takeaway.

I agree.

I also think the resilience, it's slightly been hijacked because it is often one of those words that gets plastered across classroom walls and almost young people become blind to it.

They just see it as a word that school says and I, I think like so many of those words that get used in that way it becomes a bit meaningless.

Like it doesn't actually like I think if you said a lot of young people, what, what is resilience?

They go, it's the word that's up in the classroom, do you know what I mean?

As opposed to what it really means, which we all know in life, which is you need, you will not always succeed in everything you do initially and you need to pick yourself up every single time you feel like you're low in confidence or you feel it hasn't gone the way you wanted to.

And life requires that we self motivate ourselves to pick ourselves up off the floor at times and get back up and keep going.

And that is what resilience is.

And so I think it's such an absolutely integral skill to everything that any young person will ever do and achieve.

And there are young people who take a knock and it, they, they find it very difficult to get back up from that.

And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't require a lot to do that.

And then there are young people who can take knock off to knock after not they just keep coming and they keep picking themselves up and you know, and in the end that will bear them in very good stead.

And I think what you've done so brilliantly today is one explain that in that real practical way.

And I think the same thing when you were talking about creativity, you know, that's another one of those things.

Or we need to be more creat if we're in a world where we need to be understanding this is going to be integral as we go forward in the world of AI and human connection and all of that kind of thing.

But it's really hard to explain what creativity is until you've done a project like you've been explaining where you're having to be creative and you're having to work together and pull all those strands together as you, as you explained.

And then you go, oh, now I see that.

Because then you can apply it to like say your classroom or, or whatever project you're doing.

But I think certainly for me, as well as a younger student, once you've been through the process and you can identify with it, you don't need to worry about what the label is.

You know, all those elements that come together which then form like say, being resilient or being creative.

Yeah.

And I'd almost say so the creativity and creative problem solving are sort of a very close.

And I think creativity with these can sometimes be a bit fuzzy as a concept.

I think creative problem solving is, is an essential skill, whatever.

And yes, in a film it's, you know, we had students this week who made an amazing film about a, a student who was doing.

It was very good in, in class.

So good that they didn't give themselves any time off.

And the teacher in the movie sort of says, you know, you need to have a break.

Even Einstein, you know, needed to relax a bit.

And it's called School Spirit.

And I just watched it yesterday, so it's fresh in my mind.

And, and then essentially this very hard working, very diligent girl is kind of haunted by this character who arrives as a spirit of the school and, and turns her into this terrible student who's, and she, he seems to have power over her body.

So suddenly she's throwing things and she's getting detentions and it's just all going terribly wrong.

And, and you, and you assume this is the spirit.

And then the twist is that right at the end, the, the spirit kind of helps the girl to cheat by looking at some answers on the teacher's sheet in the end.

And then actually at the end the spirit looks at the teacher and goes, essentially she, she bought the whole thing.

And that was a great way to get her to sort of to relax.

But the reason I tell you the story is that there was a part of the movie at one point where the spirit was sort of showing its spiritiness.

And so there were kind of papers flying all over the room and in the movie that, you know, they just had that genuine.

It was sort of, you know, whatever.

Thursday afternoon, it's 2 o' clock and someone goes, well, how do we make papers fly across the room?

And before they know it, someone's gone and got a couple of old spare boom poles, sound boom poles.

And they've got our fishing wire and they've got the sheets.

And then how do we take the sheets to the thing with the thing?

We've got to.

We've only got 20 minutes, let's go.

And before you.

Then you've got three of them standing out shots on the.

Behind the scenes just outside the shop, kind of with the fishing wires.

The papers fly everywhere.

And they got an enormous kick out of finding a creative solution and being creative in the moment to, to achieve what they needed to.

And I think that that is a, A skill.

As I say, regardless of whatever industry you go into, you need to approach problem solving in a creative way.

And I think that that is very much the bedfellow of creativity.

James, it's been absolutely amazing chatting to you.

I just, I just think all of these things are just integral to what I think is so important about learning, generally, whatever lens that happens to be.

And I think I also love the fact that it came out of your passion for what you were doing and it just not only solved a problem for people who were going to be interested in this medium but had nowhere to go, and then you created something that was needed, but to do it over like, say 22 years and to affect so many people and to support the industry as well as children and that their whole learning thing has been amazing.

So tell people where they can go and find out more about it, like, say, from the podcast to the courses and everything.

So that those people who are listening going, I know there's someone who's going to really benefit from this, can get that information.

Well, thank you, that's.

That's very kind of you.

So the website is the best place to start.

Youngfilmacademy.co.uk A list of all our schools programs and all our courses and, and, and events are up on there.

And our podcast is.

There is a link from the book, from the website to the podcast, but the podcast is available on all platforms.

And it's called the Young Film Academy Podcast.

And it really is.

It's like free, free film school.

So I highly recommend people go and subscribe and we speak to some amazing people.

We've had, in fact, we've got June, the minute of the movie June Part three is coming.

And we had the editor of June on previously, Joe Walker is absolutely brilliant.

And we talk to everyone about what they were doing as teenagers and see, kind of we try and get a real sense of.

And we de.

Jargonize, you know, we don't allow people to just give us sort of acronyms and whatever.

We really kind of break that down and hold on.

What.

What is your job?

What.

What does this actually mean, day to day?

Why did you want to do it?

So.

And I think it's brilliant, not just for young people, but.

But actually for anyone interested in the industry.

So, yeah, the podcasts available on those platforms or the youngfilmacademy.co.uk website or search for Young Film Academy, be careful because there are some other people who call themselves academies of one sort and people get a tiny bit confused, but it is the Young Film Academy.

Amazing.

James, thank you so much indeed.

I've really loved this conversation.

Keep up the great work and enjoy the rest of the summer courses and all the films yet to still be serene.

So, yeah, thanks so much indeed.

Thank you so much.

Been a pleasure.