Bridging the gap between education and industry
Overview
Founded in 2003, MetFilm School is a leading film, television, and online media school offering undergraduate, postgraduate, and short courses across different areas focusing on practical filmmaking. MetFilm courses vary from filmmaking to post-production as well as acting, directing and producing films. MetFilm School London is based within the famous Ealing Studios, the oldest continuously working studio facility for film production in the world. Ealing Studios has supported the production of high-end productions such as Black Mirror, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything and Downton Abbey. Its full-time six-month courses are all delivered at Garden Studios, situated five miles from the Ealing Studios campus. This innovative and sustainably focused film studio provides their students with the latest production technology and the necessary skills to start their career in the creative industries.
MetFilm School students are taught by award-winning professionals where they “learn by doing”. Courses are highly challenging and include workshops, masterclasses and opportunities to work within the industry, which gives students the practical experience they need to succeed in the industry. Today, MetFilm School has educated over 12,000 students and most of the students on courses of six months or longer are working in the creative industries.
“It's imperative that our students learn to use every piece of technology in order to be able to prepare themselves for the world of work as it's changing.” - Jonny Persey, Director of MetFilm Group
The challenges
To inspire the new generation of creative screen professionals, MetFilm School needs to ensure that students are using industry ready technology. Since the industry is constantly evolving due to new and improved technology, MetFilm school requires that its equipment is upgradeable and scalable for its students. John Joannou, the Head of Technology at MetFilm School explains: “There are two main challenges working with technology. One is ensuring that what the school's delivering is at a level that meets the requirements for the students. Secondly, it's technology that is relevant to the industry. The key struggles have been equipping every space with devices that display their pictures at the best possible quality and at an attainable price point.”
The solution: creating color accurate teaching spaces with
ASUS ProArt Solutions
To ensure the students are seeing their footage correctly, both color accuracy and picture quality is crucial. MetFilm School partnered with ASUS ProArt to install the latest color accurate devices across its teaching spaces.
In MetFilm’s post-production teaching space, the first Calman certified ProArt A1 projector has been installed in the Ealing Studio Campus. With the ProArt projector, the school is now able to run color grading sessions and see the picture accurately. Moreover, when large groups of students want to collaborate together, they can do that within that space.
In MetFilm’s main color grading theater, the ProArt PA32UCG 4K HDR monitor is now used as the primary grading device, and the PA27UCX-PK as the main GUI interface. These monitors deliver an entirely new capability the school has not had before. Adding an HDR workflow means students can now see their work the best possible way and deliver their work to industry standards.
“Being able to push an HDR signal out through the monitor and see the incredible brightness compared to anything else we've used in graduation was something that we couldn't see on the monitors we had previously.” - John Joannou, Head of Technology MetFilm School.
Computing power and scalability
Along with the ProArt monitors, MetFilm has installed a SCAN 3XS ProArt Studio workstation powered by ProArt B550-Creator motherboard. This has provided not only a whole new uplift in processing capability, but also in upgradability. The ProArt Studio workstation includes Thunderbolt™ 4 connectivity for compatibility with a wide range of devices. John has expressed that he’s familiar with ASUS and its history of making great motherboards and graphics cards, so creating a system based around ASUS products would give the school an upgradability factor that was always lacking with previous workstations.
In addition to the workstation, MetFilm was excited to evaluate the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED laptop and notice all the power that it comes packed with. Geared with the ASUS Dial, students are now able to work in Adobe Premiere more effectively than before.
The outcome
Utilizing the ProArt range, especially in terms of the display technology that is extremely color accurate at an affordable price point, there's nothing else in the market that can compete with it. For MetFilm the ProArt solution gives it the opportunity to begin its technology refresh, installing these devices throughout the school.
Product installed