Reel8 Productions creates social media videos featuring content that speaks to the interests, lifestyles and commonalities of Northwestern students, according to Co-Founder and Executive Director of reel8 and Medill senior Judy Zeng.
Inspired by channels like Jubilee and Cut, the founding members of the unscripted video production club wanted to create similar videos with a “campus spin.” The co-founders met while working in North by Northwestern’s Multimedia section and created a video called, “Can these Marriage Pact matches fall in love?”
After producing the video together, they were inspired to make user-generated content on YouTube, leading to the creation of reel8.
“The Cut and Jubilee sometimes can feel very spectacle-oriented because they want to try to get viral — because at the end of the day, they’re profit-generating companies,” said Communication senior Jessie Chen, co-founder and executive producer of reel8. “But with reel8, one of the things that differentiates it from that is we’re more community-oriented and focused on highlighting the Northwestern community.”
Each quarter, reel8 creates two videos based on pitches from members of the club that are then whittled down through a vote, Chen said. Currently, they have videos on a myriad of topics, from setting NU students up on blind dates to their “lineup series,” where students guess facts about others, such as their home state.
This quarter, the club worked on two videos: “3 Dancers, 1 Song” and “Guess the major by their backpack.” The first video brought three student dancers from different campus dance groups to take on the challenge of choreographing 30 seconds of a song in 25 minutes. The second video is part of the lineup series, where two students guess participants’ majors based on their backpacks.
The club’s digital and communications trainee and next quarter’s executive director, Communication junior Iris Chai, said the reel8 community is “open-minded” and aims to stay true to its name, which sounds similar to “relate.”
“I come up with some whack ideas sometimes, and I’m not afraid to get feedback either,” Chai said. “No one says no to things immediately. It’s like, ‘We can try this out and see how it goes.’”
She added that creating videos for reel8 has made her more curious about how to “understand others better” and build relatable content, which she has been experimenting with.
For Zeng, who has been leading the club since Fall Quarter, her goals have changed from gaining more followers on social media to making sure the club continues after she graduates.
“As long as people, more students, continue to be interested in this and have the training and understanding and passion for reel8 year after year, that’s better than I could have ever hoped for,” she said. “Sustainability and survival is so important because the club, at the end of the day, is about developing students, pre-professionally.”
With this quarter being her last as executive director, Zeng said she hopes to see students continuing to gain leadership, collaboration and communication skills while “working on a fun project” to produce content.
With the lack of creative spaces on campus and the rising popularity of content creation, reel8 is a place where people are able to explore that interest, Zeng said.
“In some ways, it reminds me of a startup,” she said. “We have our Garage — tech spaces, textile spaces on campus — but we don’t. It’s rare to see spaces outside of tech spaces where things are new and things are emerging. Reel8 is a place to come and experiment and be a part of that team.”
Chai said she hopes to continue reel8’s goal to help students learn technical skills of film production, marketing, finances and creating social content, while developing their unique brand identity.
As a relatively new organization, Zeng and Chai said reel8 is a flexible space where members can shape the club’s culture.
“For reel8, one of the big things for me is experimenting more and taking more risks of all kinds of content we produce, and trying to find our niche,” she said. “We don’t want people to mistake us for ‘the Northwestern Jubilee’ or ‘Northwestern Cut.’ We want to be reel8 from Northwestern.”
Email: [email protected]
X: @ina_choe
Related Stories:
— ASG allocates over $13,700 in funding to 10 student organizations
— Student vloggers capture their college experience on video
— Welcome to my channel: Northwestern students share college tips and campus life on YouTube
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source dailynorthwestern.com ’
