He was drawn to movies early. Recollecting his first cinematic experience at age five, Scott told Michael Buckley of
Films in Review that "it was a swashbuckler,
The Black Swan [a 1942 Tyrone Power epic]. I had to be torn out of my seat, my fingers pried loose--and that was after sitting through it twice." Art was another passion for the youngster. He learned to draw from his father, a skilled artist, and when it came time to choose a career, his father discouraged Scott's first idea--joining the military--and instead urged him to enter art school.
Scott studied painting at the West Hartlepool School of Art for several years before electing to pursue the advertising-illustration program rather than the fine arts program. He then moved on to the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied advertising and graphic design. Scott also learned filmmaking during his three years there, and in his last year, 1965, he directed his first film, a short titled Boy on a Bicycle. This thirty-minute movie featured the director's younger brother, Tony and their father and was shot in South Shields and West Hartlepool. Writing in the London Sunday Times Magazine, Gordon Burn noted that this film was "directly autobiographical in a way that none of his subsequent films have been." According to Film and Filming, the film is no longer available; a spokeswoman for the British Film Institute, which helped to finance the movie, said that Scott came and took all the prints away.
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