Seth Pickens, Features Editor
On February 1st, MBMS film students were able to spend the period on a series of interactive workshops run by the students in Costa’s Cinema Club.
This is the second time that Cinema Club has taught at the MBMS film program, the first being in September, focusing on the basics of film story structure. These workshops were a way for Cinema Club to show thanks for MBMS Film Teacher David Bainer’s assistance in their short film 12:48*.
“I talked with him and got [the first lesson] organized the first time and it was much smaller,” Club President Socrates said. “Some of our Club sponsors like DLP Media Group, CBE Law, and Deviants Media gave us equipment that we could donate to the middle school. We talked with them to get the TV and sound system upgraded to surprise his class.”
After the first lesson, Socrates began working with club advisor Bradi Everett and the other members of Cinema Club to set up another. After preparing all the activities and lessons, Socrates, Everett, and seven other students headed to MBMS for a full day of teaching.
“This time around we’re focusing on cinematography,” Socrates said. “We’re teaching three 85 minute classes broken up into sections. The first is a 20 minute lecture taught by me going over the basics of cinematography like composition, lighting, and color grading. After that there are three stations: composition, lighting, and cinematic scene capture, each run by different members of Cinema Club.”
The students were broken up into groups and rotated through stations every 15 minutes so everyone could get a chance to be hands-on with each aspect of cinematography. According to 8th grader Remi Kushner, she, along with other MBMS students, enjoyed being able to learn from Cinema Club.
“My favorite activity was the one where we tried to make our own shot from the composition,” Kushner said. “It gave us a lot of freedom to create what we wanted, and it was really fun. I learned how to create low-key and Rembrandt lighting.”
It wasn’t just the middle schoolers who benefitted though. According to Cinema Club member and senior Bennet Lauer, he loved sharing his love for cinema with the MBMS students.
“I ran the cinematic scene capture station, putting me in a one on one situation with each of the kids,” Lauer said. “Many of them were excited to have us there and passionate about filmmaking, their enthusiasm made walking them through how to act out a basic scene a joy.”
Many Cinema Club members share Lauer’s positive disposition. That being said, doing the lesson was, by no means, easy. According to Everett, he set up for the second lesson required a lot more work than the first one.
“They were organizing and planning it for several weeks,” Everett said. “Club members even went the day before to spend hours in the classroom testing and setting up equipment. In the end it was worth it though, the [MBMS] students really looked up to the kids from Costa.”
These difficulties leave Socrates on the fence about having another lesson.
“This one was super difficult to set up so I don’t think we are going to do another one,” Socrates said. “If we did, the natural progression from storytelling and cinematography would be to go to editing. I don’t know how interactive it would be compared to this one. If we did it, it would be a lecture from me followed by me reviewing their editing.”
Lessons at MBMS might not be in Cinema Club’s future, however, there are many other activities and projects planned for the rest of the year. Socrates is doing as much as he can to plan for the club’s future success after he leaves.
“I want to keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Socrates said. “I’m thinking about another summer film project and we have more upcoming Master Classes. I also need to focus on finding replacements, I’ve been leading a lot of the major projects, and if we want to keep doing that after I leave we need someone to step up.”
Leave a Reply