Filmmaking Summer Program for High School Students
Why Take Filmmaking
Spend your days creating your own summer blockbuster in our filmmaking summer camp program. You'll experience every step in the process of cinematic storytelling, from writing screenplays to location production and editing to showcasing your final project during our screening.
What You'll Learn
You will have the opportunity to work with professional filmmakers, guest artists, and other talented students to create a movie from scratch.
Your days will include classes and hands-on lab time to practice technical production and postproduction skills. You will put your classroom and lab skills into practice by heading out on location for a series of productions throughout the program.
As a filmmaking student, you will participate in the following workshops:
- Production
- Post-Production/Editing
- Screenwriting
- Tech Skills
- Film History
Program Highlights
Film Screening
At the end of each session, there is a screening of student work inside our DeRoy Center for Film Studies—the 26,000 square-foot home of Interlochen's Film & New Media Division. The facility touts four editing suites, a soundstage, a 180-seat 2K HD projection space—it's the same projection you'll find at your local cinema (films are seen and heard the way the director intended)—and classrooms are equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Additional Opportunities
The Film & New Media program offers additional summer programs that might interest High School Filmmaking students, including: Screenwriting and Animation. Interlochen is also home to the Arts Academy boarding high school, which offers a Film & New Media major for grades 9-12, as well as a post-graduate year.
Guest Artists
Recent guest artists to the Film & New Media Department during Interlochen Arts Camp include:
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Robert Eggers, film director, screenwriter, and production designer known for The Witch and The Lighthouse.
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Peter Gould, television writer, director, and producer known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
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Janet Leahy, an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer known for Mad Men.
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Michael Moore, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker.
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Gordon Radley, former president of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.
I feel grateful knowing that Arts Camp cares about cultivating my gifts. Interlochen just made me want to pursue filmmaking even more.
Darian, Film & New Media
Nic Weinfeld’s commercial success
Nic Weinfeld (IAC 10, IAA 10-12) is best known for founding Five to Sixty, a video production company that makes social media commercials targeted towards millennials and Gen Z. His path to commercial success began here, where he learned some invaluable lessons. "That’s a huge takeaway that I have from Interlochen: realizing that I’m not the best at everything, and that if I can collaborate with the people who are better, it will make my film better."