Stephanie Brown
Contributor
The Navigator

Photo courtesy: Hub City Cinema Society

Hub City Cinema Society will be celebrating its sixth month as an officially incorporated society in October. The club was officially recognized in B.C. as of May 2013 which entitles the group to apply for grants after it has been running for two years.

Hub City Cinema Society has been providing a fun way of networking within the movie industry for Nanaimo residents.

Since its Facebook group opened in July 2012, the society has seen great public attention, as well as booming membership, with a current following of 217 members on Facebook.

Although the society is not a production company—meaning they do not produce movies—they plan on eventually having a physical Hub. Members of the society will be able to use the equipment the group hopes to purchase for their own individual productions.

Zachary Tannar, one of the lead administrators of the society, has always had a vision of a place where cinema and film fanatics could meet to talk and network within the industry. “It is really important to me to be having the weekly meetings to build a sense of community,” said Tannar.

Hub City Cinema Society has come leaps and bounds as a club since a surprise guest speaker came home to Nanaimo and wanted to meet the group. Greg Jeffs, a writer and producer working in Calgary, is an original Nanaimo resident and the first guest speaker that Hub City Cinema hosted.

Tannar said Jeffs inspired the group to expand and do more than weekly meetings over coffee. From that night, the society has been slowly growing and expanding, meeting every goal the group has put forward.

The society started as a small group of six guys meeting over weekly coffee to discuss the film industry and the many jobs within it. The have grown into a publicly recognized hub for cinema and from weekly coffee meetings to events featuring guest speakers, script readings, improv nights, specific topic nights, and larger scale film jams.

Film jams are longer meetings that usually last around six hours with two hours designated to developing an idea as a group and then four hours to film it. The last film jam involved a series of short comedic TV channel pieces involving puppets and real people working together.

Tannar’s vision of the Hub in Nanaimo would include equipment for film production, such as new cameras, sound equipment, and a green screen.

The Society is open to anyone with an interest in the industry, and can guarantee a fun, knowledgeable, and useful experience. What is unique about Hub City Cinema Society is it’s still relatively small size, and everyone gets hands on experience in any role within the industry. Tannar, for example, admits to having a weakness in audio work, but he believes that if someone with audio experience joins, he can learn from them while he shares his own knowledge of camera work.

Whether it is helping learn skills to make movies, or just hanging out with other cinema enthusiasts and having fun, this society is for any Nanaimo resident who is interested. In fact, people have been showing interest from other small surrounding communities such as Parksville and Duncan.

A new member, Kynan Krogel, had an idea to start a script- and film-making club when he returned to VIU this year. However, as he passed around a piece of paper with the intention to start a club, another student asked him why he didn’t just join Hub City Cinema Society.

“Huh, that’s a better idea” said Krogel. During his first night with to the club he spent three hours editing puppet-themed film, and laughing with people he had just met.

Tannar said the vision of Hub City Cinema is to be similar to the Victoria Cinevic and the Vancouver Cineworks societies, where the equipment the society owns is available to anyone within the club. Although Hub City is not a production company, it can help members produce their own film ideas.

The next scheduled film jam will be some time in October, and a Halloween make-up class will be held on the weekend before Halloween by Maxwell Dowie. Weekly meetings are held all over town each week, and new members are welcome.

Information can be found on the group’s web page at hubcitycinema.ca.