You may have no­ticed that Hanover is not Hol­ly­wood, and also that the two lo­ca­tions are not par­tic­u­larly close to one an­other.

How­ever, there does exist a lit­tle bit of Hol­ly­wood star­dust in the grounds of Dart­mouth Col­lege in the form of film classes. That’s right, classes here can be fun.

I was re­cently roped into a pro­ject for Ad­vanced Video Mak­ing, play­ing the cru­cial role of “Par­ty­goer 2” in “Pro­cras­ti­na­tion in B Minor” by Matt Castel­lana ’12.

“It’s the clas­sic story of not want­ing to do work and putting it off until the last minute, some­thing that most Dart­mouth stu­dents can re­late to,” Castel­lana said when I asked him about the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind the sto­ry­line. “Not based on per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, of course.”

Castel­lana, who is also Pres­i­dent of Dart­mouth Tele­vi­sion, said film classes at Dart­mouth are an ex­cel­lent out­let for those want­ing to tell sto­ries vi­su­ally. The films from “Ad­vanced Video Mak­ing” will be screened at the Loew Au­di­to­rium on March 5 at 7 p.m.

Then there’s Sto­ries Grow­ing Films, a stu­dent-run pro­duc­tion com­pany that will be shoot­ing the film “Hey Tolu” around cam­pus in the Spring term. The short-film nar­rates the story of a Niger­ian stu­dent, Tolu, who strug­gles with the guilt of being in op­por­tu­nity-filled Amer­ica while his brother re­mains in Nige­ria par­a­lyzed from a bike ac­ci­dent.

The film cer­tainly sounds thought-pro­vok­ing.

“Film­mak­ing is not just an art form but a so­cial force [http://​escip.​org/​escip.​org/​Movies.​html] also,” Jonathan Sig­worth ’12, co-pres­i­dent of Sto­ries Grow­ing Films said. “We wanted our stu­dent films to be re­flec­tive of real life is­sues and ex­pe­ri­ences.”

The aim, once the film is com­pleted, is for an on-cam­pus screen­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cut­ter-Shabazz.

“The pur­pose of the club is to make movies,” co-pres­i­dent Alex Stock­ton ’15 said. “But we are also hop­ing to cre­ate a pro­duc­tion com­mu­nity here at Dart­mouth.”

Cer­tainly the em­pha­sis is on com­mu­nity with Sig­worth ex­press­ing the hope that Sto­ries Grow­ing Films will be a fruit­ful ex­per­i­ment “to see how stu­dents can come to­gether to cre­ate films based off their own sto­ries, ex­pe­ri­ences, con­vic­tions, and in­sights.”

For those who feel more com­fort­able be­hind the lap­top than be­hind the cam­era, there are screen­writ­ing classes where you can watch your ideas — or, in­deed, your deep­est, dark­est fan­tasies — come to life.

“My pro­ject is a prod­uct of ex­pe­ri­ences I’ve been churn­ing over in my mind for the bet­ter part of my time here,” Jack Bar­rett ’12 said. “Hon­estly, it’s hard to de­scribe the ex­cite­ment when you get to see other peo­ple react to it.”

But surely then you could just write the screen­play, why do you need a class to teach you that?

“It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive process, and that’s where the work­shop comes in,” Tr­isha Mur­phy ’13 said. “When we’re writ­ing a screen­play, we’re not just writ­ing for our­selves. Ul­ti­mately it’s for an au­di­ence, and it’s im­por­tant to learn how to ap­peal to one.”

Bar­rett agreed: “It’s the other peo­ple in the work­shop who pro­vide the most re­ward­ing part of the ex­er­cise. You want them to like it, you want them to feel the same way about your pro­ject as you do, and that’s what dri­ves you to make it bet­ter.”