Smashcut Founder Daniel Blackman Discusses Online Course Programs With NYU Tisch and New York Times Op-Docs

Know-how has revolutionized the schooling system over the previous few many years, however no single occasion has accelerated the tempo of change as a lot as the worldwide pandemic. The necessity for on-line studying choices on a worldwide scale, throughout all industries, grew to become actually pressing over the past two years.

One firm main the way in which is Smashcut, a web based studying platform and content material studio based by ex-Google govt Daniel Blackman. In 2021, Smashcut acquired Sequence A funding from Pearson Ventures, the biggest schooling firm on the earth, bringing with it a number of new alternatives for the corporate.

“2021 was a watershed 12 months for Smashcut. We obtained Sequence A financing from Pearson Ventures and that relationship has opened up some nice prospects. We’re increasing to incorporate topics like real-time 3D expertise, that are in excessive demand for issues similar to sport design, animation, and digital movie manufacturing, and we’re teeing up some main company partnerships that can permit us to scale considerably,” stated Blackman.

Smashcut was already properly established within the greater schooling sphere, having created programs or collaborated with establishments like New York College, John Hopkins College, Columbia College, and the Digital Style Group.

Based on a 2020 report by Market Analysis, 63% of U.S. highschool college students use digital studying instruments each day. As well as, American graduate (52%) and undergraduate college students (39%) contemplate on-line studying higher than classroom studying and important to their success.

This week, Smashcut introduced an growth of their present relationship with New York College Tisch College of the Arts by launching a course, Documentary Workshop, which is able to embrace classes created in collaboration with Tisch and The New York Instances’s Op-Docs division. This course will permit college students from all over the world to find out about nonfiction filmmaking and obtain suggestions from among the main names within the discipline.

“On a private degree, this venture is near my coronary heart, since I first moved to New York to review filmmaking at NYU—again when going surfing meant queuing up outdoors a movie show to see the primary Blade Runner. It’s very nice to see issues come full circle, and to assist my alma mater educate the subsequent era of visible storytellers,” stated Smashcut Founder and CEO, Daniel Blackman.

Documentary Workshop will cowl each facet of the style, from idea improvement by analysis, writing, directing, producing, and enhancing. College students will study a spread of kinds and strategies and turn out to be well-versed within the related authorized and moral points dealing with documentary filmmakers. Op-Docs staffers and filmmakers shall be featured in video classes created collectively by Smashcut and NYU, in addition to collaborating in dwell Q&A classes. As a part of this initiative, scholarships may even be out there. The course shall be taught by Shivani Khattar, a New York-based impartial filmmaker whose work ranges from function movies to branded content material and commercials. She beforehand made future-forward documentaries for NBC Information’ streaming platforms.

“I bear in mind Shivani Khattar as one among our most imaginative and artistic graduate college students, and since she earned her MFA, I’ve watched proudly as her work has competed in festivals all over the world. Shivani has expertise in industrial manufacturing, her brief documentaries have received journalism awards, and her work as a cinematographer might be seen on main platforms,”stated Annie Stanton, govt director of Tisch Particular Packages. “To have a working artist like Shivani instructing with the New York Instances Ops Doc crew in a web based platform like Smashcut is right. Smashcut actually understands how visible storytelling needs to be taught and can assist us provide the easiest on-line studying expertise to aspiring storytellers.”

The NYU Tisch and NY Instances Doc Ops information is only the start of Smashcut’s growth plans this 12 months. The studio is teeing up some main company partnerships that can permit Smashcut to scale considerably in 2022 and deal with schooling in rising arenas together with gaming, AR/VR, digital movie manufacturing, animation, and far more.

You may study extra in regards to the NYU Tisch and Smashcut programs at NYU Tisch or electronic mail [email protected] for scholarship inquiries.