University of Rhode Island student filmmakers now have a place to pool their resources together and network once again due to the revival of Film Collab.
Film Collab was revived by Sunny Davis, senior film media and writing and rhetoric double major. The club has existed on campus for many years but dissipated in spring 2017.
“Film collab has been around at URI for a long time, almost 10 years I’d say,” Davis said. “[I’m] not sure when it started exactly, but [I’ve] met many alumni on sets I have worked on who mentioned they were a part of it.”
The club was created out of a shared need for a way for student filmmakers to be able to complete the large amounts of work it takes to make even a short film. Sunny said that this was back before URI’s film program offered a substantial amount of production classes.
Without class time to work on their films, students began to meet together to collaborate on their projects to lessen the workload and get their films produced. However, that’s not all the club does. Sometimes it’s just, “to watch films together.”
Davis joined in 2016, back when she was a freshman, a time when the club, “didn’t really do anything,” Davis said. “We would just get together every week and discuss films. The next year we discussed making a mockumentary together, we started pre-production but never finished. Film Collab slowly died out in the spring of 2017.”
This fall Davis became a URI 101 mentor to a class of film majors, many of whom expressed discontent about there not being a film club for the school. Davis realized she, “was the last pre-existing member who still goes to URI so [she] titled [herself] president and the rest is history.”
Since then the club has become more than just about people coming together to make their films. It has become a place for filmmakers, “to support each other with what they are working on, learn from one another and get help on their films,” Davis said. “[My] vision for the club is that it is an open space for film majors to collaborate and socialize, get to know each other and create a film community at URI. We have already paired up members of the club with PA (production assistant) positions in advanced level class films.”
The club meets once a month and is centered around a different topic pertaining to film to discuss. According to Sunny, the club is open to students of all majors, the next meeting is on Thursday, Nov. 8 in Ranger Hall’s living room.