For almost two years now, CWU’s film club has been encouraging students, both film majors and not, to get their creative and critical juices flowing. Senior film major Matthew Corbin serves as president of the club, and was encouraged to get the club back up and running after an extended hiatus.
“I wouldn’t say I started it, I’d say I restarted it as the film club existed prior to COVID, probably about five or seven years back,” Corbin said. “If you go online, you can find evidence that they have an old YouTube channel that’s now defunct and hasn’t been uploaded to since 2019.”
After months of attending clubs, Corbin felt he needed to take it upon himself to bring back the film club after he realized there was not an active one.
“I took the bones that were there and essentially tried to jumpstart it again after COVID,” Corbin said. “I found out that it was dead and no one else wanted to do it, so I said I’m gonna take initiative and do it myself … No one else is going to do it.”
Since Corbin serves as the clubs president, he is responsible for many duties to keep it running, while also serving as the vocal and physical leader.
“First and foremost, I’m the face of the club,” Corbin said. “I’m usually the one that will be up at the front speaking and delivering stuff and running activities, usually with Trent by my side. I also do a lot of the high-admin stuff, the things that have to do with the large finances and communicating with other organizations outside of the club.”
Vice President of the film club, second-year film major Trent Meacham shed light on his role in the club, and the similarities between how actual student film sets and the club operate.
“I do everything [Corbin] does but I do it with style.” Meacham said. “The film [club] officers reflect how a student film set usually goes. Even though there’s these set positions like director, writer, gaffer and all that, there tends to be a lot of overlap as well. A lot of people tend to work in different positions or multiple positions at once.”
Through each month, the film club follows a loose schedule. In the initial meeting of each month, Corbin and Meacham teach club members new and old, about techniques used in the industry.
“The first meeting [of the month] is usually going to be some kind of workshop where we focus on some aspect of filmmaking that might now be being taught at the school,” Corbin said. “Or to reiterate to people who might not know about filmmaking and kind of teach them in the most basic terms.”
The second and third meetings of each month are “up-in-the-air,” as Corbin puts it, and are never set in stone to allow for flexibility. This can include pitching scripts, checking in on projects and more.
The final meeting of each month sees the club venturing out to the local movie theater the Grand Meridian to check out a new release.
“[We] go and request funding from the school for trips,” Corbin said. “Which is essentially ‘Hey, can you pay for us to go to the Grand Meridian?’ and we say ‘Hey, first come first serve, we have 10 tickets available for this movie.’”
Meacham highlights the friendliness and community of the club, and how that is one of his favorite parts of what they’ve built.
“The cool thing about these meetings is afterwards after the meetings are over, we just kind of go to each other and start talking with each other and hanging out,” Meacham said. “I got to meet like five new people that I’d never talked to before.”
Meacham ignores the notion that you need to be a film buff to join the club, as even beyond the technical aspect of crafting movies they hope to guide members through all lenses of film.
“We want to get everybody in,” Meacham said. “Whether or not you’re super interested in making films, we still want to provide the educational value of film, the historical value and also a community of people that could just get together and make things whether it’s filmmaking related or not.”
There are many questions that new members may find themselves asking at first glance, and Corbin is aware of that while leading the workshops.
“How do you make a film?” Corbin said. “What goes on during pre-production? What goes on during script-writing? How do the cameras and headlights work? [We] do these fun little interactive workshops that a club member can interact with and learn through. I do not think film is something that you can learn by reading, or learn by watching, it’s something you have to have your hands on.”
All of this will come to a head with the film club’s second annual 72-Hour Film Bash. The bash, which will take place from Friday Jan. 12 until Sunday Jan. 14, will put club members to the test, and enlist them to create their own five-minute short film over the course of three days.
“I decided a genre, a specific character and a specific object, and you have within five minutes,” Corbin said. “And based on those four things you have to go make a film. Last year it was a psychological thriller, it had to include an FBI agent, and it had to include the prop of a carrot. That created some rather interesting results.”
