Sprocket Guild brings filmmaking to Pitt community

The best filmmakers in the world participated in the student film process.

George Lucas,… The best filmmakers in the world participated in the student film process.

George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Spike Lee, Francis Ford Coppola and John Singleton defined and helped shape cinema into what it is today.

Known to academics as the “student film generation,” these men saved Hollywood in the late ’60s, said Greg Allen, an intro to film instructor at Pitt and an assistant professor at Point Park University.

“They invented the blockbuster,” Allen said.

As graduate adviser of the Sprocket Guild, a student production organization, Allen’s key interest in working with student filmmakers revolves around “championing student cinema.”

Since 2000, the Sprocket Guild has helped undergraduate students, staff and other affiliates of Pitt to understand the processes of filmmaking, from film theory to marketing.

“Theory is how to read a movie, and production is knowing how to make a movie,” Allen said, adding that the Sprocket Guild aims to educate anyone, regardless of skill or knowledge level, on the ins-and-outs of the filmmaking process.

Anyone interested in experiencing the filmmaking process firsthand can have the chance to work with professionals in the industry — or, as Pitt junior and stand-up comedian Dan Vollmayer did over spring break, take a road trip through Las Vegas, Phoenix and eventually into Hollywood.

“We saw Vin Diesel at a [movie] premier,” Vollmayer said.

Vollmayer, along with Allen and five other students, spent the break shooting and acting in Allen’s upcoming “romantic dramedy” about road travel, “Star Wars” and love.

“For the past five years, the Sprocket Guild has enabled filmmakers, including myself, to make films without going into our own pockets — or without having to,” Allen said.

Now that filmmaking has entered the digital era, Allen said, the filmmaking process costs significantly less. This allows the Sprocket Guild to make professional-quality movies at relatively low costs, something that takes a lot of the financial worry off student filmmakers’ backs.

Sprocket Guild President and Pitt junior Alex Mosby has spent more than a semester working on acting, directing and helping to produce his first film, a $400 project that has cost him none of his own money.

“I learned an awful lot from making it, and that’s our goal: experience,” Mosby said. “We foster creativity, which is paramount on this level when you don’t have much money.”

Thanks to the technology of digital filmmaking, Mosby shot his movie using film that, according to Allen, a regular person could not tell from professionally produced films.

Past productions fostered by the Sprocket Guild have gained recognition outside of the Pitt community. Mike Dickson, who formerly worked with the Sprocket Guild, now has his movie in the New York Film Festival.

Funded entirely by Student Government Board, the Sprocket Guild allows the student filmmakers to keep the rights over their product. If student films reach a production agency and wider audiences, the Sprocket Guild will make sure that the students earn all rewards from their own work.

“When you go to film school, you don’t own your own film. The school owns your film,” Allen said, adding that student filmmakers face this problem at universities and film institutions. “The Sprocket Guild is the solution to that problem.”

Undergraduate film institutions have traditionally required students to use their own equipment, hurting those who could not afford to purchase outside materials and equipment needed for production, according to Allen.

Some of the solutions that the Sprocket Guild offers include equipment and resources for student use, professional and financial help, internship opportunities and, most important, student film ownership.

“We’re not interested in capitalizing on our filmmakers. We’re interested in promoting cinema,” Allen said.

Out of all the film clubs on Pitt’s campus, the Sprocket Guild offers aspects that other groups do not. Some groups, Mosby said, focus on just television or business, for instance.

“Our goal is to get students hands-on experience [with film]. We attract people who are really interested in this and who want to do this for a living,” Mosby said.

Students from Point Park University also work closely with Pitt’s Sprocket Guild chapter. The union of these two groups allows students to enjoy the financial resources from Pitt and the art students at Point Park, according to Mosby, who said he was one of the first undergraduate students to complete a film.