The Africa Digital Media Academy (ADMA) is hoping to prepare digital media professionals for the technology of the future with its recently opened motion capture studio. The motion capture studio is the first facility of its kind in East Africa. Rwanda is the third African country with a motion capture studio, following South Africa and Nigeria.
The academy trains Rwandans in advanced media production, which includes film editing, production and 3D animation. The program is a partnership between the Workforce Development Authority in Rwanda and Pixel Corps, a company based in California with more than 10 years of experience in preparing people to work in different digital media fields.
Integrating Tech into the Film Business
“It’s really committed to looking at digital media holistically where the students are learning video, 3D, green screen, etc.,” said Alex Lindsay, founder of Pixel Corps. “They’re really learning what we think is kind of the next generation.”
Established in January 2012, the Africa Digital Media Academy seeks to educate and prepare Rwandan students of all ages — roughly 18-60-years-old — for production work in video, 3D and visual effects not only for film and TV but for a variety of industries, including education and tourism.
Most of the students are professionals in their field as the academy does not promote itself as a traditional school. It offers classes for students, focusing more on craftsmen training.
Laura Pohl, a photography instructor at the academy, said the experience level of the students varies and they often have students sharing equipment whenever they have to do hands-on work.
She said students often get hired to do work for companies. For example, filmmaker Cory Stern made a documentary about Rwandan children who had to get surgery for rheumatic heart disease. The Rwandan government also hired the students to cover the main commemoration ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide on April 7.
She said the opening of the motion capture studio will allow students to better meet the needs of various clients.
“With motion capture we’re hoping that students will eventually be able to create short commercials or short cartoons that organizations may need,” Pohl said.
Infrastructural Backing and Branching out
The first phase started in March 2012, when the academy opened its first computer lab, which had 27-inch iMac computers and a pilot group of 20 students. Since then, the academy has opened a second computer lab, a green screen room and the motion capture studio.
The process of motion capture involves the recording of live movement and the subsequent use of data to better create realistic animations for film and TV. Motion capture is typically used in feature films and TV commercials. ADMA’s motion capture studio uses 24 mounted cameras.
Lindsay said the government pays for the infrastructure, the computers, the cameras and any staff members that work onsite.
Motion capture is helpful in producing large amounts of high-quality humanoid animation, Lindsay said. Although it is typically seen in movies like “The Hobbit,” “Avatar” and “Star Wars,” it can also be used in music videos, training materials and commercials. Nowadays, motion capture has been used in the e-learning and corporate marketing arena.
“As a whole, we are training students in the full range of skills required to produce high-quality film, TV, web, and educational products,” Lindsay said. “We don’t see these as separate fields but, rather, related and quickly converging fields. Not only are they becoming more and more similar, they are more often used together for large campaigns.”
Kigali native Rene Shyaka, 25, works as a freelancer doing civil engineering work. He has been a student at ADMA since 2013 and hopes to work in 3D animation, architectural visualizations or on films or television shows.
He said the motion capture studio will help reduce the amount of time it takes to create animations.
“It is a boost that reduces the time for animating and that will be beneficial for filmmakers,” Shyaka said. “If we get more animation, it will make us produce more films in short time to become more productive than when we were supposed to use the hand animation.”
Sizing up Rwanda’s media industry
The media industry in Rwanda is small at the present time, according to Lindsay. Skills, standardization and infrastructure for production is still limited. But he said because Rwanda already has the fiber infrastructure in place, the country is a good investment opportunity.
More television stations, NGOs and online enterprises need services and workers and there are not many eligible people who can fulfill these services. The academy’s first 1,000 students would be absorbed into the local economy, he said.
The media production market has substantial growth opportunities as well as businesses that have not yet been explored. And over the next two decades, media production for web and e-learning will overshadow TV and film revenues worldwide.
“To take advantage of this opportunity, Rwanda would need to start now,” Lindsay noted. “They have the right infrastructure to make this happen. The highway is there, we just need to build the cards.”
Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rwandan filmmaker Eric Kabera started his own production company called Link Media Production. He also founded the Rwanda Cinema Center in 2001, which received accreditation in 2004 as well as the Rwandan Film Festival in 2005.
The center eventually grew to become the Kwetu Film Institute, the first full-fledged film school in Rwanda.
Kabera said the school’s media design program trains students on the techniques of the industry. Students have been inspired to start their own film production companies, Kabera said.
“Rwanda is very well poised to benefit from that because we have actually been producing a feature film every year for the last 10 years and that has given us a platform where young men and women can learn quickly,” he said.
Although there are no formal statistics on Rwandan film industry, also known as “Hillywood,” Kabera said there are about 20 production houses and a feature film on Rwanda every year on an international scale.
There are also five to 15 short films and documentaries every year out of Rwanda. The Kwetu Institute produces seven to 10 short films each year, compared to an average of five each year.
He commended ADMA’s work and said he hopes to collaborate more with the academy in the future.
“I think they’re doing a great job and we’re complementing each other because the terrain is still very unexploited and we don’t have much,” he said. “We don’t have many schools, many initiatives similar to this.”
The academy hopes to have 500 students this year and to have the program become a certificate program by the end of the year. The academy aims to keep up with the increasingly changing landscape of technology in the future.
“As the proliferation of the Internet continues to expand, as we have more and more broadcasters, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we’re really playing in a different world,” Lindsay said.