Keene State Media Production (KSMP) has returned for the spring semester with a new calendar of events. The organization, according to junior and KSMP Secretary Patrick Garcia, provides resources for students who are in media-based majors and hosts multiple film festivals on campus for students and community members each semester.
Some of the events that the organization will be hosting this semester are a music video film festival, a silent film festival and a found footage festival.
Garcia said the found footage festival was what he was most looking forward to.
“We have the goal of filming most of the content for that on things that aren’t really cameras, so old phones, DSs, Ring doorbells,” Garcia said.
Garcia said these festivals are open to submissions from anyone on campus alongside the content that the club itself will create. Additionally, Garcia said the club as a whole is open to anyone on campus.
“We’re heavily marketed toward film majors but we’re trying to make sure everybody knows that it’s not just a closed club to film majors,” Garcia said. “We even have community members who don’t go to the school who attend our meetings … it’s open to anyone on campus who’s interested in using equipment to work on their creative projects.”
Senior and KSMP Vice President Jacob Conway, who has been a part of the organization since his first year at KSC, said it exists as a valuable on-campus community for artists in all types of media.
“Our goal is to make sure that everybody can feel included because art and media in itself is such an expansive taste and no matter what type of art you do, artists can connect with one another,” Conway said. “With Keene State Media Production, that’s our goal, to allow people to meet one another and then feel safe and supported to express their own creative voices.”
An area of growth that the club hopes to explore in the future is an expansion into more types of media, such as graphic design, photography and podcasting, Conway said.
“With the past few years, it’s been heavily film-based, but the club is media production, so we are trying to destroy that notion that we’re just a film club,” Conway said.
Conway mentioned the club’s equipment resources and its freedom to work in different types of media as reasons why interested students should consider joining KSMP.
“There’s a conceived notion of, ‘Hey, we want to make movies and art so here’s all expensive equipment.’ We’re trying to break that notion that you need all this fancy equipment, but we have fancy equipment as well to make sure that you can settle the groundwork before you figure out what type of things you need,” Conway said. “Also, just trying to be as friendly and flexible as possible and making sure that the members do have a hand into what type of media that they want to play into, and then we take it upon ourselves as an e-board to make sure that their specific niches and arts are touched upon.”
KSMP meets on Mondays at 6 p.m. in the Media Arts Center room 138.
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
