Huntington University using grant to launch film and media talent pipeline program
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The Northeast Indiana Strategic Development Commission has awarded the first installment of a three-year, $1 million grant to Huntington University that will launch an initiative to provide area high school students with opportunities for training in the film and media industry.
The Creating a Talent Pipeline, or CTP, initiative will offer students early entry college credit courses in film, television and animation, as well as support current Huntington students taking part in the university’s film capstone program.
“This grant is allowing us to be able to reach a little bit further to tap in to some programs that we’re already doing with a little more depth, and also to to bring in some schools that we don’t already partner with in the hopes that that we can build some pipelines and some opportunities for those students,” said Matthew Webb, assistant professor of film production at Huntington.
The grant from the Strategic Development Commission adds to the $1.3 million that Huntington is putting toward the development of the CTP program.
Webb said one of the primary goals of the program is to reach out to more high schools around northeast Indiana to provide dual-credit courses that would count toward an undergraduate degree at Huntington.
“[We’re] growing the curricular opportunities for high schoolers and also providing them opportunities to work in and with professional equipment,” he said. “So that can mean we take workshops to the schools, and also the students can come from those schools to the university and do workshops on campus with us.”
Huntington also plans to use the grant to expand its School of the Arts Summer Academy, which has been offered for nearly a decade, as well as mentorship opportunities from Indiana-based film professionals.
Webb said the academy brings 50-60 high school students to campus each summer where they are trained by Huntington faculty and students in a variety of areas such as film, television, animation, musical theater and voiceover performance.
“They get a chance to use the equipment that our current students are using–professional equipment that folks are using out in the in the real world,” Webb said.
The university’s film capstone program provides Huntington juniors and seniors the chance to collaborate with industry professionals on a feature-length film production. Most recently, Webb said, students were able to work on a film titled Overhill Manor.
Webb noted that some students have gone from participating in the Summer Academy and continued their education through to the capstone program.
“This year, we graduated two students [who] did camp for multiple years, had workshops at their schools, came to Huntington, did all four years, and were able to be on at least one, if not two or more feature films,” he said. “So it’s just a really wonderful opportunity across the board, starting in high school all the way through the end of college.”
Webb said the goal is to have students ready to gain real-world experience while still in school and gain the necessary skills to immediately join the film and media workforce.
“We want our students as early as possible to be able to start doing work outside of college, working on professional, paid gigs and and being able to use their craft to support themselves, but also to serve others,” he said.
Another goal for the university, according to Webb, is to create an environment that keeps students in Indiana’s burgeoning film industry after graduation.
“That’s really our our one of our big, long-term goals is that we wouldn’t have this talent drain from Indiana,” he said. “We want them to stay here. The demand is growing in the industries outside of traditional movie making and and media making. We want to help to create a community of visual storytellers here in northeast Indiana that don’t have to leave northeast Indiana to work.”