Youth Film Intensive Wins Grant to Fund Professional Equipment

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The award-winning Baranov Museum film intensive is gearing up for another year of youth-created documentaries, and it just won a Rasmuson Foundation grant for its technology needs.

The program, which was founded in 2012, will now be able to hand its students professional-grade camera equipment.

Program instructor and grant writer, Marie Acemah, says she learned they’d won the grant this weekend.

And based on a recent interview with KMXT, she’s kinda happy about it.

“It’s a lot of money and it’s really like a dream in terms of being able to get the best technology.”

She says from now on the students will be using specialized equipment.

“Essentially students were filming on iPads, sometimes cellphones, I did have one DSLR cameras, so really just the most basic equipment to world class equipment, so it’s like night and day.”

And if you thought a few cameras and lights couldn’t possibly build up to $19,000, well…

“It does. We had actually negotiated a wholesale price… because we’re buying so much. To get equipped with three professional cameras plus a whole set of audio equipment plus lighting equipment, plus tripods, batteries, extra memory cards. I mean it just get extremely expensive.”

She says they could have easily gone over the grant amount.

And they will be spending some extra money on staff training to learn how to best use the equipment over the entire year.

The film intensive is currently accepting student applications for this summer’s course. The application period ends May 5.