Ready for a close-up

By: Fan Ji

Posted: 7/2/08

Meet the Aggie SWAMP club. Screenwriting, Acting and Movie Production, or SWAMP, "is supposed to encompass just about everything you can imagine about filmmaking," said club President David Lackey, a senior telecommunication and media studies major.

SWAMP was created in 2000. The club has regular meetings, workshops and social events related to filmmaking and film appreciation.

In a 2002 interview with The Battalion, Vishwanand Shetti, class of 2003, said the club began with a group of students in the film society, but they became more interested in production and directorial aspects of filmmaking rather than viewing the films.

The club has expanded its membership from 12 to 15 to more than 90 participants, during an eight-year stretch.

Many of the members work on more than one aspect of the moviemaking process, whether in front of a camera, behind a camera or in other roles - some SWAMP members have gone on to graduate school in visualization sciences, a department in the College of Architecture, and to work in the film industry.

A lot of the members joined SWAMP with no prior moviemaking experience and came to see what it was like.

"Everyone is encouraged to participate," said Alleigh Schulz, a senior agricultural journalism and French major and the vice president of SWAMP, "Whether it is holding the boom mic - which is my favorite part - acting, being the gopher who gets supplies, working behind the scenes or editing."

New members don't need to worry about how to get started because SWAMP encourages people of various experience levels to get involved. Filmmaking is explained through 10-minute instructional sessions at the beginning of each meeting. The group also has a new member film school, which usually takes place at the beginning of each semester. The group meets every week throughout the year in Langford Building C.

Most of the films SWAMP produces are shorts. These range in length from a few minutes to half an hour. In 2006, SWAMP helped produce five short comedies, four short suspense films, two commercials and one short action trailer, among other projects.

Lackey said his favorite projects have been the ones they did for Apple's Insomnia Film Festival, where five-people teams from schools across the U.S. had 24 hours to write, film, edit and submit a short film to Apple's website.

"Twenty-four hours of no sleep and frantic film making can be a bit grueling, but it's incredibly fun and rewarding," Lackey said.

Members of SWAMP have participated in three of these events since Insomnia started two years ago, and in two films for the competition in fall 2007. SWAMP has been in the Top 16 teams nationwide in the past, and members said they plan to participate in the fest again in the future.

An event the club puts on every year is SWAMPFest. At the festival SWAMP showcases student-produced films, some made by non-members.

"It's really cool and lets aspiring filmmakers and actors get their work shown on the huge screen in front of a live audience," Lackey said. "A lot of preparation goes into it and it's been a success both years we've had it, and we're looking forward to SWAMPFest 3."

SWAMP will be active over the summer. Schulz and her friends are working on the beginning stage of an introduction for a SWAMP video that they plan to play at the MSC Open House and the club's first meeting of the year. Creativity is endless and the group is more than ready for the upcoming semester.

"We have tons of ideas for fall," Schulz said, "Including music videos for local bands, short comedies and I have even heard rumors of some feature-length films."