Creativity at the Film-Making Club: Let there be light!

The Film-Making Club was created in 2005, and already has ten short films to its credit. Spotlight on a club that does more than making movies!

Making a film requires solid teamwork and genuine commitment. In addition to shooting, which requires at least five people in key roles—plus the actors!—there is also the work of casting, location work, choice of equipment and techniques, logistics (hardware, costume design etc.) and post-production, which includes film editing and soundtrack.

What does it take to make a film? "It involves a marriage of the power of the imagination, the technical constraints and the actors’ performances," explains Quentin King, the current president and founder of the club. "You need a real synthesis of art and technique," he adds. For club member Neal Hartman, "the French word réalisateur really reflects this aspect of the work, where you need to imagine something, then reconceptualise it in terms of its feasibility in order to realise it in the best possible way. Essentially, you have to find a way of transforming a dream into a visual reality." The club members have already realised a few dreams in various forms.

In 2007 the club, still in its infancy, organised the CinéGlobe festival, bringing to CERN’s Globe, recently inaugurated as a communication forum, a festival of short films and audiovisual workshops. The festival accepted 1450 entries from 80 countries, representing 100 hours of screen time, which the selection board whittled down to 5 hours. The work of the committee went far beyond that, however: sponsors had to be found, partnerships set up, logistics organised. The result: a thousand visitors flocked to the Globe in just three days.

The audiovisual workshops brought together professionals and enthusiasts around short films, spawning further workshops and lectures and incidentally providing "film people" from all around the Lake Geneva area with a valuable networking opportunity.

If there was no 2008 edition, this was largely because of a lack of available time to meet all the demands involved. "There was certainly no lack of demand from professionals and the public alike. We had plenty of enquiries about a repeat event," concludes Jacques-Hervé Fichet, the former club president who was behind the project.

The club’s motto remains: learn by doing. That’s why, in addition to the films currently in the pipeline, Quentin King and Neal Hartman are, respectively, organising and participating in the "48 Hour Film Project". This event, which in 2007 was held in 55 cities around the world, is refereed by a professional jury. The goal is to advance film-making and promote film-makers with local and international distribution, as a final festival brings together all of the winning entries in each city. The competition comes to Geneva for the first time on 10-12 October 2008. The challenge is to make a complete movie, from script to post-production, in just 48 hours, starting with the allocation of a random movie genre to each team. Not content with organising the event, the club has put together its own team. A few volunteers are still needed!

Are you up for a 48-hour sprint?

If you want to be a member of our film-making team, learn more about the club, help with the organising of the competition or find the website of the competition, go to

http://info-oye.web.cern.ch/info-oye/