Film Programs at Hook Arts Media

After School + Summer Programs

Hook Arts Media offers after-school and summer media education programs for students ages 14-25. In these programs, students get a crash course in filmmaking designed to engage their critical thinking, community engagement, research, and storytelling skills. With several hours of hands-on training in:

• Professional film equiment
• Editing Programs
• Production techniques
• Interview techniques

Students will collaborate on original film projects about the subjects that most interest them. By the end of the program, each student will have helped create at least one original student-produced film.

The fall and spring film programs consist of 7-week after-school classes on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The summer program is a 4-week intensive that includes field trips, special guests, and 4 days per week of immersive filmmaking. Both programs culminate in a public screening, where students can share their films with their friends and family. Throughout the program, students earn minimum wage as they gain pre-professional filmmaking skills to prepare them for college and career.

Learn more about:

Digital Connections / Film Fellows

This is an intensive, multi-month program. Accepted applicants- or “Film Fellows”- will improve their filmmaking skills while building their portfolios and growing their professional networks. At the end of the program, Hook Arts Media will help them secure employment in the industry. Film Fellows can look forward to the following:

• Hands-on filmmaking skills training with professional equipment
• Software training with the Adobe Creative Suite
• Career mentorship
• Portfolio development, including resume, reels, and website
• Resources to produce a short film
• Support to find a paying position in the industry at the end of the program

With regular meetings in Red Hook, digital media teaching artist placements throughout Brooklyn, and site visits throughout the city, Hook Arts Media’s Digital Connections students will get an expansive introduction to the city’s filmmaking opportunities.

All Digital Connections students will be paid $15/hr while participating in the program.

Film Fellows Alumni

The inaugural class of Digital Connections Film Fellows worked as media educators with Hook Arts Media partner schools throughout their fellowships. They produced 3 original short films and crewed on other film projects. Tristan Szabo Culbert’s capstone film, Orphism, was an official selection of the 2021 International New York Film Festival.

See our 2020 cohort’s films here!

Hook Arts Media filmmaking students and alumni have gone on to study filmmaking in college, work on production teams right here in NYC, and produce their own films.

Learn more and apply to Digital Connections below:

Digital Connections

Film Programs In Schools

Teachers and school administrators can bring Hook Arts Media’s film programs to their schools. Our arts educators will guide your students through filmmaking equipment and techniques designed to prepare them for college and career. Hook Arts Media offers in-school and after-school arts programs that can vary in length. In addition to trimester and semester-long programming, we also offer “pilot sessions” from 3-7 days. Fill out the form below to request a free consultation.

Support Our Students

Hook Arts Media’s filmmaking programs are dynamic job training opportunities that give many of NYC’s most vulnerable young people an hourly wage while they develop their skills and find sustainable career opportunities. In addition to learning professional filmmaking techniques, our students use their skills to think critically and engage with their community. Through our programs, students have explored issues like:

• Street Harassment
• Gun Violence
• Reproductive Justice
• Immigration

Our students have earned college scholarships, grants, and other awards for program participants.

Hook Arts Media is proud to have established a pipeline to support young people to develop their filmmaking skills, cultivate soft skills for professional work environments, and find paying jobs in the film industry.

• Summer Digital Boot Camp is a 4-week, 80-hour filmmaking intensive that introduces students to filmmaking and pairs them with a local mission-driven organization to create promotional mini-documentaries about those organizations and their missions.
• Fall In Transition: Media is a 7-week documentary filmmaking course culminating in a series of mini-documentaries fully produced by the Spring cohort
• There’s another In Transition: Media session in the spring.
• Digital Connections is a pre-professional job training program that connects pre-professionals to the skills, opportunities, and work experience necessary to finally place them in paying positions within the city’s film industry.

But the average cost per student is nearly $30,000, which limits our ability to serve more of the city’s most vulnerable-and deserving- young people. The rising costs of space, security, and equipment threaten to edge out the already limited number of seats available for this vital program.

If you can support our students with a donation of any amount, we would be very grateful.

Sponsor a Film Student

Every year, dozens of young people apply to our after-school and summer film programs. Unfortunately, with our limited resources, we always have to turn away talented young people. Sponsor a student today so that we can accept another future filmmaker to our programs. Every young person deserves to tell their story.