As president of the film club, Milan Shah (11) has big visions for the future of film at Westview, one of them being to share and help broadcast projects within the community. The film club’s latest project, a documentary on Westview’s Robotics and Career Technical Education (CTE) classes, has been in the works for weeks. 

The documentary aims to encourage eighth-graders to join Robotics classes by showing the benefits of working in a CTE environment. To prepare for committing to such a project, Shah, his team of executives, and the club members went back to the basics. 

“In October and September, we had to get everyone ready because everyone in the club was pretty much new,” Shah said. “So, we would, every week or every other week, start teaching using slide shows that would go through different angles, different film techniques, and how to use the camera. [During that time,] we practiced film by making a small music video. It didn’t really go anywhere but it was good to get everyone more familiar with their designated equipment.”

Film club treasurer Madison Nguyen (11) had a big role to play in teaching the new members. 

“[A lot of people] in film club didn’t really know how to use cameras so me and the other executives were the only ones who knew,” she said. “I have experience from my camcorder montages and it’s pretty much the same applied with the school cameras.”

When overlaying the B-roll and audio, Linaarika Das (11) ran into some problems upon editing the footage. 

“We were having some issues transferring footage [from the cameras to the software,] so most of our editing time was using the computers in Mr. Casas’ room and then organizing it,” she said. “[But] we were able to plug and unplug the camera, change the google account we were using because of storage issues, and then look through a lot of previous footage from others who had used that camera to find our footage.” 

Film club also encountered problems with the recording process. 

“I would say [the biggest challenge] was during the first week when we interviewed,” Shah said. “There was some problem with the audio and the interviews we filmed came back with no audio. But we communicated the issue with them and they were perfectly fine reshooting the interviews in the next couple of weeks.”

Through the ups and downs of the process, Shah said that the group members have grown significantly with their film knowledge and participation within the club. 

“I felt like everyone had a big growth moment and everyone learned and the actual filming itself was really great,” Shah said. “[The club] has a lot of experienced members on the executive team who have been filming and taking classes and things like that but [we also had] those who really don’t have an interest in filming. But I still felt like they actually grew and learned, and as a president, it’s very rewarding to see that.” 

Although the film club has high hopes that the documentary will do its intended purpose of encouraging future high-school students to take robotics classes, members of the club have other aspirations in mind. 

“I think this project is really good to make a name for film club just because in past years, we’ve been focusing more on film theory, watching movies, and not really taking an active role in Westview,” Das said

Film club has plans to continue working on projects that benefit Westview. 

“We have lots of plans for future films,” Nguyen said. “We already have had many clubs reach out to us so we can make documentaries for them, which hopefully [Westview] students and others can watch.”