Constant renewal of the Film School's equipment

Jon Sigurdsson is the new Technical Director of the Icelandic Film School, but he formally started work on the 1st of October. His appointment was finalized in August and he remotely controlled the school's equipment and technical affairs at the beginning of the autumn semester.

The position of Technical Director was vacant after Stefan Loftsson, who had managed the department for the past 5 years, resigned, but Jon, who is known as Jon "Camson", took over the job, a great catch for The Film School. He has decades of experience in following all the latest happenings in filmmaking technology and related industries, as a service and sales manager for film companies and television stations, both at his own company "Camson" and at others. He for instance worked for Nyherji for a long period.

But Jon is not only just the technical director, he is also the school's production and operations manager. As a production manager, he is responsible for ensuring that the technical processes of film production withstand pressure and maintain good quality. The Film School is a very large production house with 200 titles per semester and over 30 full-length movies a year. As operations manager, he oversees all of the school's teaching and processing facilities, which recently moved to Sudurlandssbraut 18, where the school's future home will be. At the same time, the number of students is growing rapidly and the growth will be even greater when IFS launches. It is planned that the school will use the entire building in the coming months, but the school now uses 2/3 of the building. There are therefor many angles to consider for the new technical-, production- and operations director, as this is one of the school's key management positions after it was decided that The Film School now operates as a university.

In a short chat with the news site, Jon said that considerable equipment has been added to The Film School's equipment rental recently, as the school strives to offer its students the best possible equipment and also ensure that they have access to the software that benefits them best.

In particular, the school's camera equipment has been improved and this equipment has been renewed to a considerable extent as well as the necessary accessories. Now the school has for instance twice as many "packages" of equipment for students' graduation projects, but that goal was achieved by adding lighting equipment, prime lens sets, focus controls and wireless video transmitters as well as a number of other smaller parts. All departments of the school have access to the equipment rental, but the school also works closely with KUKL equipment rental.

All computer equipment for both image and sound editing as well as color analysis in the suites on the first floor were recently renewed. The next project is an upgrade of the school's sound recording equipment and construction of sound recording studios.

The recording studios on the 1st floor have both special effects tents, "green screen" facilities and work is underway to further improve the lighting facilities. On the same floor, preparations for make-up facilities have come a long way and work is also underway to set up a costume and prop storage facility. Work is also underway to renovate 20-30 seat cinemas, which is expected to be operational by next semester.

As far as computers and computer issues are concerned, Jon says that the integration of the school's computer system is in the process and it is hoped that in the future one computer lab will host all the school's data that students have access to. The software necessary for teaching at the school will be housed there. Renovation of the school's computer equipment began this autumn, and equipment upgrades in classrooms are underway, and the number of projectors has already doubled.

The school has renewed the software licenses for most of the programs used in the teaching; Adobe, Pro Tools and DaVinci, as well as the addition of new sound teaching software, Pro Sound Effects, a collection with over 800,000 sound effects.

In the next few weeks, it will be clear how much of the new housing the school will use, but it is expected that the 2nd and 3rd floors in the back building will be taken into use in February or March. In the coming weeks, the management will focus on the 1st floor, lobby and studio, and the 1st floor in the back building in the technical spaces, as well as servicing the teaching spaces on the 3rd and 4th floors in the front building.