Film competition fosters talent

Speaking of the difference between Hong Kong film teams and those in the mainland, Lin Tiangui, who participated in the production of Cape No 7 and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, said that Hong Kong crews have comparatively high execution styles and work with great efficiency.

Filmmakers on the mainland are still in a development stage, and there hasn't been an upgrading process after the famous directors of the fifth and sixth generations, film industry observers said.

In the next six years, Jebsen Industrial will continue to hold the competition every two years, with a total investment surpassing HKD$5 million ($645,000).

"I never though that one day I would be able to use the Arri Alexa camera myself, and the practical results were really fantastic," said Zheng.

"Also, in the future I can put in my resume when hunting for a job, that I have used that camera, and I think it will give me a lot of advantages in the employment market," she added.

Meanwhile, Jebsen Industrial plans to widen the scope of the competition.

"We chose contestants from 12 universities in the maiden contest, but we will expand the scope later and we hope that more companies will join us in making a commitment to cultivating young moviemaking talents for China," Yang said.

The interaction in China between film and TV institutes and industry players, including directors, scriptwriters, and supervisors, is rather limited, unlike in the United States, which is one of the critical barriers for the development of talent, said Yin Hong, director of the Center for Film and TV Studies at Tsinghua University.

In the US, veteran moviemakers and producers usually fund the education of young people in academies and institutes, or reach out to them in classrooms when they give lectures, said Yin.

Another drawback of the domestic educational system for the film and television sector is that it's not international enough, he added.

China is now the world's second-largest movie market, according to figures released by the Motion Picture Association of America in March. Following the US, China took up 8 percent of the global film market with annual box office revenue of $2.7 billion in 2012, the MPAA said.

In 2012, China's box office revenue increased 30.18 percent year-on-year to 17.07 billion yuan, according to data released by the film bureau under a new administration formed in March, which falls under the auspices of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the State Press and Publication Administration. Domestic films accounted for 48.46 percent of the total market with ticket sales of 8.27 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, the number of deals and partnerships in the film sector involving Chinese and US companies is increasing in recent years.

Last year, Dalian Wanda Group Corp Ltd, the owner of China's largest theater chain by ticket sales, completed the acquisition of the second-largest theater chain in the US - AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc - for $2.6 billion.

Such deals have created huge demand for talent with a background in the domestic and international film industries.