Okay, they’re not really that top secret, but the sense of mystery does make it all seem that little bit more exciting. To be more plainly obvious: this week I’ve been working quite extensively on a project to help boost the University’s focus on film and film-making and to encourage increased collaboration between the creative industries. It’s still a little way off but it’s certainly still an encouraging prospect!
What this post is really about though, is my surprise at how straight-forward it is to go about setting something like this up. Without sounding like too much of a hard-sell, the University and the Students’ Union (SUSU) really do hand you the tools to help you realise a whole range of possibilities. Well, it has to be firmly within reason obviously, but the fact is, if you have an idea for an event or project that you think will benefit the University and/or SUSU, there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a go.
This all started a few months ago now at the very beginning of the semester, at the Creative Industries Induction week held by our lovely SUSU Creative team - you’ll find I blogged about said event all those weeks ago! During a team-building exercise, the creative societies in attendance were asked to come up with ways to encourage collaboration with each other, and it was at this point that myself as Film Editor of the University’s entertainment magazine The Edge, and Pippa, the president of the film-making society Wessex Films, hatched an ingenious plan.
Together we started to brainstorm ideas for a University-wide student Film Festival.
Pippa and I, hard at work on our ideas for the festival
It may have started a little ambitiously, but we soon found that actually, the University itself has everything we would need to run such an event, from a cinema in the form of Union Films, to support staff, a bar and of course, most importantly of all, funding.
Things always seem to become significantly more complicated when money is involved, but SUSU’s funding process was surprisingly pretty straightforward. All you need is access to a society computer account and the forms are all submitted online. After some hefty research to make sure our maths was right, everything was sent off for approval and I let out a huge sigh of relief.
Sending the funding forms off was surprisingly straight forward.
It’s very easy to bat these things away as impossible dreams, but when you sit down and actually begin to plan, it all becomes a lot simpler. The University, its campuses and its many, many societies and services form a condensed version of the wider world. Everything is in one place and within reaching distance (including people to help with the process) making it the perfect time to practice setting up an event or project like this.
So, to end with some wise words from the contemporary poet Shia LaBeouf: “Don’t let your dreams be dreams”. Being at University is the perfect time to give ambitious things like this a go. You’ll always find support around should you need it.
Obviously, keep an eye out for the soon-to-be-named student film festival coming to campus at some point in the new year!
Ben
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