Brooklyn Young Filmmakers Center (BYFC) is launching the Fort Greene Information X-Change blog, http://fginfox.blogspot.com, featuring “Neighbor Sketches,” intimate interviews with neighbors from all areas of Fort Greene, from the brownstones to public housing, speaking frankly about class, race, history, neighborhood development, and their fears and hopes.
Brooklyn Young Filmmakers is exploring new ways of bringing together residents from all areas of the diverse Fort Greene neighborhood, first in dialogue and the sharing of information through Neighbor Sketches, and then in cooperative activity through Community Filmmaking, which puts diverse community members together in production assistant teams to work on the “no-budget” narrative films of emerging filmmakers (www.wearebyfc.org).
In gentrifying New York neighborhoods, such as Fort Greene, long-time residents are struggling to survive as the price of living goes up when well-to-do newcomers move in next door. These groups may never interact with each other, and therefore never consider each other to be neighbors. How do you inspire people to enrich their lives and step beyond familiar networks to embrace a more diverse community’
The Neighbor Sketches project starts by answering the question: “Who are these strangers who live next to me?” Neighbors fill out an in-depth questionnaire, followed by a live interview that is recorded, transcribed, and edited into the sketch. Sketches are being indexed on the blog by streets and public housing developments. Plus, Neighbor Sketches are being printed to handout to residents who don’t have the internet.
A colorful Fort Greene Information X-Change brochure advertising the Neighbor Sketches project is being distributed locally. This is an all volunteer project that has received funding from the Citizen’s Committee of New York.
One of the initial sketches featured on the FGInfoX blog is with Daysi Roman, a 2008 graduate of NYU film school and a resident of Fort Greene public housing. Brooklyn Young Filmmakers executive produced Ms. Roman’s senior thesis film project, “Back Streets” (30min), which Roman produced and which was directed by Adonis Williams, a 2008 School of Visual Arts graduate. With its first Community Filmmaking project, Brooklyn Young Filmmakers helped these emerging filmmakers better organize their shoot, their story, and their limited budget.
BYFC mobilized adult and teen students from its classes to work on the production team and cast as film extras children from the Whitman Community Center in Fort Greene public housing, where Brooklyn Young Filmmakers has its office. BYFC recruited film professionals as departmental consultants, and did a neighborhood scavenger hunt for props, set, and wardrobe.
What could be a more fun way of inspiring intelligent conversations, creativity, positive risk-taking, and a sense of purpose and connectedness to the artistic growth happening all around them in Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn, than by taking diverse residents to the movies in a whole new way, from the ‘inside’ of how films are made and giving them an opportunity to work together as part of a crew on a low budget film.
Brooklyn Young Filmmakers hopes that by helping to network neighbors through the Fort Greene Information X-Change’s Neighbor Sketches project, they will also be finding new supporters and participants for future Community Filmmaking projects.
The Mayor’s Office of Film (MOFTB), in conjunction with the NYC Dept. of Small Business, is currently seeking proposals for a pilot production training program that will help women, veterans, and economically disadvantaged New Yorkers gain the skills needed to succeed at a specific craft. MOFTB is seeking to support a program that puts an emphasis on union level trainers working with participants.
Brooklyn Young Filmmakers is taking an entirely different approach with Community Filmmaking by giving these types of participants a change to get their feet wet in low budget filmmaking where they will have a chance to have hands-on-involvement in the different type of film crafts, get film credits, and start networking with emerging filmmakers who might give them work on their next projects.
The Brooklyn Young Filmmakers new class series, “Make Your Own Film,” will start in the fall. The three class series covers Scriptwriting, Pre-Production and Production for a low budget film (the focus is on story development, budgeting, production design, casting and directing — not the technical aspects of camera, lighting, and editing).
The final class will end with a film shoot of a short script selected from student scripts. Emerging indie and college filmmakers will be recruited to head the camera and lighting departments and to mentor the BYFC students, with union level film professionals as consultants. BYFC will do a neighborhood scavenger hunt for set and props.
As part of its spring 2008 “Make Your Own Film” Salon Series, Brooklyn Young Filmmakers recently produced its second Community Filmmaking project, “From Pawns to Kings,” from a script written by a BYFC student. Emerging professionals assisted the community interns on the shoot and BYFC outreached for donations and extras from the local community. The project was funded in part with a Department of Cultural Affairs Re-grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council.
Brooklyn Young Filmmakers also received a 2008 grant from City Councilwoman Letitia James to assist with general overhead. Brooklyn Young Filmmakers Center filmmaking classes are offered through New York City College of Technology’s Division of Continuing Education.
For more on Brooklyn Young Filmmakers projects, FGInfoX, Neighbor Sketches and Community Filmmaking, contact Trayce Gardner, BYFC director, at 718-935-0490 or email trayceg@wearebyfc.org.
