The website helps aspiring movie makers find the equipment and instruction needed to get started.
Finding the equipment and instruction needed to get started as a young filmmaker can be extremely difficult. The D.C. Independent Film Festival has launched a new online hub that helps fill that gap.
“We hope that we are giving young people useful skills to take with them,” said Deirdre Evans-Pritchard, executive director of the D.C. Independent Film Festival.
She said they have launched a new unique online hub, Y-CAM.org, for young filmmakers aged 13 to 19.
“We realized that it was necessary to make a space for young people who have not yet moved into the adult world, to be able to take part in this, to be creative, to build some community, to learn what’s out there, find opportunities,” she said.
The website features are free and makes it easy for aspiring filmmakers to connect with professionals for advice and find local equipment to make their ideas come to life.
“TikTok has opened up all sorts of possibilities in young people’s minds. You can film on your phone now, and so everything has suddenly changed,” Evans-Pritchard said.
They also have a monitored and dedicated Discord channel.
“That’s where we’re going to have a lot of our sort of immediate activities, conversations, opportunities, possibly for young filmmakers to say that they want to meet other filmmakers, and so that way we can keep an eye on it and make sure that it’s a good place for people to connect,” she said.
Evans-Pritchard’s group is also launching special production awards for young D.C.-region movie makers to help them get going. The $600 awards are only available to emerging filmmakers in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
The deadline for the first awards is Dec. 31. The grants will be awarded three times a year to two recipients per cycle.
“Say you want to be an animator, and you started working in animation, but you just need that little extra money to get the camera or to make a stand, to buy yourself the iPad, or to get the materials you need to film something,” she said. “This is just a handout of money. All you have to do is apply.”
In the application, she said you have to give them “a sense of what the project is” and have one adult be a reference to “say that this project is really going ahead in some way.”
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