I recently inherited a voucher for a training course at the NFTS from a friend who couldn’t take advantage. Having had a couple of longer jobs lately, I thought that a week in Beaconsfield might be a nice career-useful leisure activity.

Apart from the Alan Partridge-like sensation of living in a service station hotel for a week, it was a great week. I studied Craft Editing - though I’ve been cutting in Final Cut Pro for quite a while (as well as other software), I’d never had formal training in the creative side of editing. Obviously, most people can happily learn that by trial and error, but that leaves you slightly set in your ways, I find. It’s invigorating to have your rationale for each cut challenged by an editor; to examine and justify your instincts, and see some of the ways on which you become attached to cuts, where you should really stay flexible and willing to change.

Also, the course tutor had edited lots of Peppa Pig, and as I have a three year old daughter, I felt able to say, with some confidence, that despite the amount she must have watched her shows while cutting them, I bet I’ve seen them more.

One of the school screenings while I was there was “Made in Dagenham” (very enjoyable), after which the film’s producers chatted to the students about the film in a way you’d never get at a public Q&A at a film festival. Also, as Stephen Woolley’s old producing partner Nick Powell founded the NFTS, it was a rare opportunity to see those producers of so many brilliant British films of the 80s talk candidly together about the industry.