Ok, organizing a cinema club

Hello everyone,

As always, when I have a question involving filmmaking I come here for advice and opinions.

I'm in an engineering school and this year I'm the president of the "cinema club". Last year, the club wasn't very active and this year I decided to inject in it some life. So I got active, barely getting sleep or personal time in the very first days and weeks of the school year.

The first day, I was shooting interviews of the freshmen, asking them why they came to our school. The same day, I projected a little welcome video I shot two days before and edited by then. This was by far the most complicated thing I had to do and I was so happy I pulled it off (it's derived from a famous Canal+ show) and I received a lot of congratulations and recognition.

Then, someone came to me asking me to shoot a video to present her club. I shot a few interviews of members, recorded a voice over and edited it in her presence in about 2 hours. It looked great, especially compared to the crap the other clubs had.

Now for my own club presentation, I had to make a short film. I mean it's a cinema club...

So I wrote two pages and a half, we shot it on tuesday, edited on wednesday and shown on thursday. There were a hell of lot of issues and I even had to show them something that was unifnished and buggy but it still was fun and it made my point (i'll be showing you the flick once it's complete. It has lots of flaws but still holds value).

After that, I lot of people came to me wanting to join in the club and that's why I'm here.

I have no idea how to organize this. I know I want to make as many shorts as possible and learn from every one of them. I may need some people for acting, holding reflectors, booming and if possible holding the camera so I can direct.

But most of them told me they're interested by the script part or the editing/VFX. I can't do anything for them for the later, I learned with Internet and I can give them access to tutorials and softwares but that's it, the rest is up to them. For the scenarios, I usually develop my own, script them myself and edit them by myself too. No one is interested by learning lighting, sound, camera work.


In a nutshell : I have access to a lot of human ressources but have no idea how to use it except for holding reflectors..
 
split them up into teams that compliment each other.

Have them work on small film projects, so they can get practice and try it out...

then when they get better, you find out who burns for this the most... these are the people you start working with besides the club... the rest, you play a teacher and mentor for, and help them along to where their path takes them.

don't worry if you only have learned from a book... many people learn better by learning from others, and that you can do... you don't need to be the expert, just help them try stuff out.

also, by teaching, you actually get better... there's a reason it's constantly used in martial arts...

i myself just started working with a local evening class school, to teach others the basics of movie making... so they can learn, and i can learn at the same time...
 
Thank you for the advice. It's scares the hell out of me to teach. I like sharing knowledge and stuff but I don't feel I have enough credit to be giving them lessons.
 
have you read many books about the subject?
have you seen alot of videos about the subject?

sure you might not be an expert.. but you know enough... and if you can just impart 5% of that total knowledge, and do it well enough, you can be a teacher..

most teachers, only teach from a book anyways... so what's the difference...

have confidence... just do it...
 
I'm looking into insuring me equipement. If I'm lending my camera and lenses to let them experiment and learn, I want to be safe.

Also, I'll be sending email and asking them stuff to help me make groups. 19 people came to me to express their interest.
 
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