NEW YORK FILM ACADEMY AUSTRALIA STATEMENT

Monday, March 16, 2020

New York Film Academy Australia (“NYFA Australia”), a college of film and acting located in the Gold Coast, Queensland, suspended classes on Friday, March 13th 2020 and has made the decision to temporarily move to online learning. This will allow NYFA Australia students to continue with their studies while helping the Gold Coast community at large limit the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

In an effort to be proactive, NYFA Australia leadership decided to suspend classes following Tom Hanks confirmation that he and his wife Rita Wilson were diagnosed with the coronavirus (COVID-19) while working in Australia on Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic. NYFA Australia Board Director, Elle Bailey, explains: “Following confirmation on Thursday, March 12th that Tom Hanks had tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19), our administration began to contact students who have been working on the same motion film production as Mr. Hanks to learn if they had recently been on set. With the discovery that several NYFA Australia students had been working on the set and may have had contact with Mr. Hanks during production, the decision was made to ask those students to self-isolate and self-monitor for 14 days as a precaution.”

In many cities around the world, these kinds of interventions were taken too late to slow down the spread of the virus, which has overwhelmed Public Health Services. While there is no confirmed case of COVID-19 in NYFA Australia’s Gold Coast Campus (or any NYFA campus at this time), the decision has been made to move to remote instruction to do our part in helping to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar steps have been taken at NYFA’s U.S. campuses in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, Florida.

Director of the Gold Coast Campus, Tasha Cooper, understands the obstacles facing institutions that are transitioning to online education. Ms. Cooper states “at NYFA our students learn by doing, to best prepare them for a real-world environment. Because of this style of teaching, it has and continues to be challenging as we learn to transition our hands-on approach into an online classroom. Nevertheless, we’re working diligently to make it happen, and quickly because we are committed to continuing to provide excellent education, while simultaneously preventing the spread of COVID-19 among the NYFA community and the community at large”.

Ms. Bailey and Ms. Cooper welcome inquiries from other contemporaries, especially those in the education and training sector that have questions pertaining to transitioning to online classes.

They can be reached via email on: [email protected]


About New York Film Academy Australia

As an extension to the world-renowned New York Film Academy (founded in 1992), located in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Florence and many more cities all around the globe, New York Film Academy Australia (NYFA Australia) campus on the Gold Coast continues to embody the philosophy of learning by doing.

In the heart of the innovative Queensland film industry, NYFA Australia students find themselves completely immersed in their course of study - whether it be Filmmaking, Acting for Film, Screenwriting or 3D Animation - surrounded by award-winning faculty and working with state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, and access to production sets on the world-famous Village Roadshow Studios (VRS). VRS is the studio location for many Hollywood films including “Aquaman,” “San Andreas,” “Unbroken,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” “The Shallows,” “Kong: Skull Island,” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” among many others.

Through an Australian-first partnership, NYFA Australia has also collaborated with Warner Bros. Movie World, setting up film production hot sets and providing students the opportunity to shoot throughout the iconic theme park.

To learn more about NYFA Australia, the college of film and acting, visit nyfa.edu.au to learn more.

All programs and workshops are solely owned and operated by the New York Film Academy Australia and are not affiliated with Village Roadshow Studios or Warner Bros Movie World.