A group share-out at March Film Club. Photo by Michelle Diamond.
Bring a rough cut. Bring a shot that won’t work. Or pull up a chair and watch what people in Vancouver are making. At BC + AI Film Club, we put short films and works in progress on a big screen, then ask the people who made them how the hell they pulled it off.
Sometimes that takes us into sound design or the edit. Sometimes the whole conversation is about one choice in one shot. It’s a good room to be in if you’ve been making things alone and want someone else to look at the work with you.
Who’s in the room
Kevin Friel and Kris Krüg started the conversations that grew into Film Club. Kevin hosts with Kris, Mayumi Rollings, Magenta Rúne, and Yangos Hadjiyiannis. Brian Hockenstein and the volunteers help run the night. You can see how it got started in Kris’s original Film Club story.
We usually meet at Multimodal Media Lab on Water Street in Gastown. July was a different kind of night. We sat in a circle, wrote down what we wanted from Film Club, and gathered around laptops to see what people were working on. Michelle Diamond photographed the whole evening.
One prompt, up to a minute
Film Club’s prompt challenges give you an excuse to finish something small. One edition sent people off to make toilet paper ads. Another went into ASMR and sound. April’s Appetite screening is another good place to see how differently people can read the same brief.
When a challenge is open, the current invite asks for an MP4 of 60 seconds or less, made with whatever tools you like. Get the theme, submission details, and deadline from the current event listing or the Film Club WhatsApp. Ask us for the WhatsApp invite at a meetup.
Watch a night, then pick a rabbit hole
- February Film Club in two minutes is a quick look at what the meetup feels like.
- Kevin Friel on sound design in DaVinci Resolve walks through how he gets an AI-assisted first pass of sound onto an editing timeline.
- Magenta Rúne on an art-school film that finally got made explores what an independent animator can make with a mix of AI and 3D tools.
- Diane Laidlaw on story, representation, and emotion gets into what she wants an audience to feel and how she directs for it.
For full nights and more demos, open the Film Club YouTube playlist.
From the links members brought in
People share what they’re making and what they’re watching between meetups. Here are four public YouTube links from that collection, with the creators credited on their own channels.
- Critical Seduction by Tiny Ghost Studios.
- Mr. Canada, Episode 18: Server Highway on the Mr Canada channel.
- Simcluster Ad, a contest entry by Zaro & The Robots.
- The Chronicles of Bone: The Last Lost Boy by Kavan the Kid, a short a member brought to the group.
Find the Film Club creators
We asked around the club for YouTube channels so we could find each other’s work between meetups. Follow a filmmaker whose work you liked, leave a comment on a rough experiment, or send a friend something you think they’d enjoy. If we missed your channel, send it our way or tell us at the next meetup.
- William Jordan
- Sean Cranbury
- Ricardo Torres
- Magenta Rúne
- Misha Samorodin
- Dorothy Pang
- Rnold Smith
- Kevin Friel / Mr Pixel Wizard
- Kris Krüg
- Robin Puga / Lil' Bites
- Cale
- JP Holecka / The Brand Experience (show page)
- Lourdes Gant
- Magenta Rúne and Mayumi Rollings / Tiny Ghost Studios
- Matt Lambert / R3ALMS
- Mishel Lablonde / Condos in Space (project site)
- Sharad Khare / Human Biography
- Suzy Easton
- Tito Ferradans / Anamorphic Channel
- BC + AI community
- Manuj Aggarwal
- Nicole Donnelly
- Noa Titievsky
- Nura Studios
Come to the next Film Club
If you’ve never made a film, you’re welcome. If you’ve been making them for years and are still figuring out where AI fits in your work, come compare notes. Bring a clip, a question, or a friend. The Film Club page has the next date and RSVP link. The meetup archive has photos and recordings if you want a look around first.
