This article talks about South Seas 20 years in the making. Auckland magazine today celebrates with us...
Focus on Capturing Career Possibilities
It’s celebrating 20 years in business and, while South Seas Film and Television School may not be your average Kiwi company, it operates much like one, co-founder Gerben Cath explains.
“We started out by taking out a mortgage on the house, and despite the 20 year timeframe, we still have that mortgage,” he laughs. That’s not to say the business is operating in the red. On the contrary , it is due to the company’s consistently strong commitment to improvement and sustainable growth.
Gerben Cath and David Coddington co-founded South Seas Film and Television School in 1992. That year 32 students were enrolled. Today more than 200 students enrol on the school’s training courses every year.
In 1992 those students all worked in the one building, today the training institution encompasses six buildings. By the mid 1990s, South Seas has become a government registered private education institution.
Today, animation, on screen acting and digital photography are also offered as full time diploma courses to compliment the mainstay of film and television production training and it is now the leading private training film school in New Zealand.
“It just wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been committed,” Cath says. “Training young people is challenging but also enjoyable and rewarding; that’s what keeps us ticking over. It’s a fun, motivating and colourful place to be on any given day. There’s always lot’s of buzzy things happening around the school with students shooting documentary and drama projects, including horror films.
“It’s a privilege to work in the creative industries, it’s more fun and interesting than most other jobs and if you’re going to train people for that, you train them to push creative boundaries - that’s the fun part.”
The training school was established after Cath started a production company studio. “We constantly had young people seeking us out, wanting to get involved in the industry. David was teaching drama and we decided to get together.” They placed a classified advertisement in the New Zealand Herald and with 236 replies, the pair were convinced. “It began as an extension to the studio production business. We planned to start small, but it had a life of its own.”
Cath knew what he wanted the training school to achieve. He had been through a four year film and television course in Holland, but realised much of what he learned could have been condensed into a more intensive practical training experience, with real life skill acquisition.
“There’s no point in committing young people to a four year degree course to work in an industry which requires mainly practical skills.
“Students need to have the practical skills and experience they will need for entry level positions in the industry – that’s what gives them the confidence to go out and get work when they graduate.”
To provide this South Seas developed an intense industry relevant learning course in film and television production skills. “We designed a series of practical learning exercises that became more complex as the course developed so that by the end of the year they hadn’t just done things once or twice, they’d done them 20 times or more.”
During the past five years, the number of students on the one-eyar film and television production course has remained steady at about 128, a figure which Cath says is fairly much in line with demand for graduates. This may explain the school’s success.
“It would be difficult if we weren’t achieving graduate employment targets because prospective students and their parents want to know what the employment situation is like. Initially we tracked graduate employment simply for promotional purposes, and also to stay in touch. We’ve enjoyed retaining links with many graduates, especially from the early years.”
South Seas started publishing the list of graduates in its prospectus in 1996 and found it was a good marketing tool. With so many South Seas graduates, the additional printing cost is starting to become significant, in the latest prospectus it was fourteen pages long.
Cath says the film and television course has maintained a minimum graduate employment target of 85 percent. “Most years we’ve achieved more than a 90 percent employment rate.” They are impressive figures, made even more so when you consider the criticism often levelled at media training schools.
“The common criticism is that there are far too many graduates. In reality employment uptake has been very good in some skills areas we can’t supply enough graduates each year,” he says.
“We wouldn’t have been around for 20 years if we weren’t providing industry training that was relevant and meeting the industry’s needs. If our students weren’t getting jobs in the industry and proving that they had the necessary skills, South Seas wouldn’t exist. Young people deserve to get a helping hand to get into the creative industries and the creative industries need good young people. We are assisting both of these processes.”
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