Every other year at Spokane Falls Community College, the drama and cinematography departments come together to create a short film.
This year’s short film is called, “The Journey,” and the screening will take place June 5 and June 6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Spartan Theatre. The film was written by a Spokane local and was shot completely within walking distance of campus. It also uses a college campus as a backdrop for the film’s plot.
Emily Romano, the lead actress in the film, talks about being on set, and the nerves that come with it.
“It was definitely super nerve wracking the first day with acting in front of a bunch of crew,” Romano said
This is Romano’s first time acting on camera and first production at SFCC. She describes that everyone was patient with her and the other students during the learning process.
“It takes a lot of patience from both sides and everybody kind of understands that this is new to all of us, it’s not like we’ve all been filming for years,” Romano said. “We’re all very new to this entire thing.”
Romano also offered a synopsis of the film from the perspective of her character.
“The film is about my character Alex’s first day of college,” Romano said, “and I really don’t want to do it and so I’m kind of dreading the entire day.”
Romano describes how her character develops anxiety about going to college for the first time, but finds a welcoming community throughout the course of the film.
The goal of this project is to give students a closer experience to being on set than they might get in class. Ian LaBarge, the film club faculty advisor is participating for the first time in the student film project. LaBarge describes how the project is managed.
“[The film is] Faculty led, but student achieved,” LaBarge said. “It’s not exactly the same thing [as being on a normal film set] because there’s a little more teaching and learning going on during the process but it’s still a step closer to real life production than maybe a normal classroom setting might be.”
Kemuel DeMoville, the drama club advisor, shares the same sentiment. DeMoville has gone through many student films at SFCC, and highlights safety as an important piece of the project.
“Ultimately, we want it to be an experience that is as close as possible to a film set, but one that still provides safety,” DeMoville said. “It’s not, oh you messed up, you’re out of a job, get out of here. You’ll never work in this town again.”
DeMoville stresses the fact that the film is working out nicely, but it isn’t what the project is really about.
“I always tell the drama students, the show is not the product,” Demoville said. “The student is the product. It’s nice if the show comes together but what’s more important is that the students grow from the experience.”
