One by One
FilmNorth, Recipient

FilmNorth

St. Paul, Minnesota

Promotional flash drives grant young filmmakers flexibility

St. Paul, Minnesota, nonprofit FilmNorth is the largest filmmaking support organization in the upper Midwest. For more than 35 years, it has offered workshops, mentorships, promotion and more to independent filmmakers at every stage of their careers. Its mission is to empower artists to tell their stories, launch and sustain successful careers, and advance the organization as a leader in the nationwide independent filmmaking community.

Opportunities for emerging artists

Abby Stewart, youth programs coordinator at FilmNorth, is part of the AmeriCorps Community Technology Empowerment Program. She’s a program administrator for the Studio Thirteen Future Filmmakers Lab, an intensive program for high school students that runs three nights a week from September through December.

“Typically, filmmaking labs are dedicated to established filmmakers to help hone their craft,” Stewart said. “We realized there was nothing like that for high schoolers who were emerging and aspiring filmmakers. We’re really hyped about it. It’s the only one of its kind in the upper Midwest.”

While the Studio Thirteen program is free, it’s highly competitive and only accepts 13 students from ninth through 12th grade. Each of the 13 weeks is dedicated to a different filmmaking discipline and includes lectures, guest presentations and field trips around the Twin Cities. “We get really awesome industry professionals, and students get hands-on industry experience in the actual locations,” Stewart said.

Creativity and collaboration are the cornerstones of FilmNorth’s youth programs. For Studio Thirteen, each student is assigned a role, from director to color corrector to gaffer, and by the end of the 13 weeks, they’ve worked together to complete a short film. The finished short film from last year’s Studio Thirteen cohort premiered at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in April.

Branded tech accessories up the professionalism

Through the first year of the program, moving large digital files from one student to the next was a challenge. The next year, a one by one grant provided promotional flash drives for students to use. “Having the different drives allows students to take their projects home and work on and develop their own ideas, then bring it back to us to polish, rather than have us stand over their shoulders the whole time,” Stewart said.

Not only did the tech solve a problem, but using these promo flash drives—imprinted with the FilmNorth logo—added an element of professionalism. “Having something that had our branding on it made the drives feel more important to the students,” Stewart said. “It seems small, but it goes a long way when you’re working with youth.”

A note from Cheryl

FilmNorth and its Studio Thirteen program give aspiring high school filmmakers rare opportunities to learn and grow. We’re proud to have provided promotional flash drives to support this creative work. If you’re interested in a one by one grant, visit onebyone.4imprint.com.

For more information about FilmNorth, please visit https://filmnorth.org/

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