La Poudrière offers graduate training in animation filmmaking for French and foreign students with previous knowledge of animation who would like to specialise in production. It is a 2-year full time professional course open to students and professional trainees.
The school aims at training industry professionals to be able to bring a project to completion either alone or in collaboration with a team, thanks to a total control of the film production process.
The training is a 2-year full time course from mid September to mid July that brings together each year around ten students and professional trainees. This small number makes it possible to concentrate on the abilities and needs of each student. Teaching is in French.
Teaching methods are based around directly transmitting knowledge and skills by trainers with a wide and varied experience of the animation film and audiovisual industries. Training is also enhanced through the school's partnerships with TV channels, book publishers and the SPFA, Syndicat des Producteurs de Films d'Animation.
The key elements of the teaching programme are based around personal or collective work and exercises using techniques chosen by each student and including constraints that would be encountered in a professional production situation. The economic, legal and logistical aspects of the industry are also studied along with drawing, English, press review, film and cultural visits. Encountering a number of professionals from the world of film, but also dance, music, theatre and literature allows each student to draw from these unique experiences to choose the particular path he or she will follow.
A director of studies, assisted by a technician, provides students and trainees daily supervision and assistance throughout their stay at the school, while visiting industry professionals make up the rest of the teaching staff. A part from the courses and an active and necessary participation in the life of the school, creating and producing animated films during this training period also demands a great personal investment.
Completion of the course is recognized by a graduation degree. Students and trainees are not requested to work on a dissertation as the course work is made up of individual or team practical work. At the end of the training programme students are required to pass before a graduation jury made up of the head of studies, the managing director of the school and professionals from different fields of the animation industry.
«La Petite Lettre de la Poudrière» aspires to be the episodic, partial and inevitably subjective account of a rapidly moving school. The latest edition (n°9 - june 2009) is available.
The edition 5 to 8 of the Petite Lettre are available on this site actualités.
Running alongside the full-time course in filmmaking and thanks to support from the MEDIA programme of the European Union, la Poudrière offers a module in literary adaptation open to European animation students and young professionals. European programme
