Howdy

Welcome to the Alumni Mailing List! Even though you have moved on from Texas A&M, the officers and the rest of SWAMP know you are still out there making and or appreciating films so we wanted to keep you up-to-date with what we've been doing. The Alumni Newsletter will be a monthly letter informing you of the latest SWAMP activities and any major events that have been going on in the club. We hope this will keep you posted and we encourage you to use the Alumni Mailing List to help us in the process. Let us know what you've been up to, and if you have any suggestions, pass them along and help make SWAMP a better organization in the process.

We've Moved!
Our new location hasn't deterred us from making great movies
As you may or may not have known, last year we ran into some hurdles with the College of Architecture and the issue of reserving space. Unfortunately, this year we were no longer able to hold our meetings in Langford, but thanks to some quick thinking and the construction of a brand new building, we are now located in room 213 of the Mitchell Physics Building. While it was a bit of a stretch at first, the members have taken to the room and we are now holding meetings that average 60 members! What's more impressive is that many of these members are actually new members coming back after the first meeting. It may be a bit early to say, but SWAMP's efforts at retaining new members seems to be working, and we're improving because of it.

A New New Member Film School
Rethinking how to teach our members
It's been a big year for SWAMP already, and there have been a lot of changes making each of us rethink the way SWAMP is being viewed and how it's helping its members. This led to the creation of a new New Member Film School. This revamped NMFS takes the new member more into consideration. Instead of throwing them to the wolves to make a film, the officers decided that it's in the new members' best interest to actually teach them how to make a short film step-by-step, thus truly making NMFS a film school for new members. The school takes an entire day and guides the new members through the process of creating a film where members write, produce and edit a complete 30-second scene by the end of the day.

The first new NMFS held on September 19th was a good start. While most teams didn't end up finishing their scenes, it was still a valuable learning experience for both members and officers alike. Round two of NMFS will be held in the spring with a more intensive focus in mind, and the hope is to finish in one day this time. If you're disappointed about the change, in October we created SWAMPTOBERFEST, a competition where we take the new members after having taught them what we know, and throw them straight into the fire. The main difference is that its open to all members, which makes it more of a competition, but without losing that old NMFS spirit. The movies will be premiered at the Halloween party where the winners will be announced. SWAMP will then pay for the winning filmmaker to have their film entered into SXSW.

Officers Elections
Adding more talent to the team
Congratulations to Benjamin Johnson on being elected Treasurer of SWAMP. Ben Johnson, class of 2010, is a Communications Major with a Minor in Film Studies. He spent several years as a columnist for the Battalion spotlighting artists from the University as well as writing music and film reviews. Ben's election was unique in that he was the first officer elected who came in as a new member since SWAMP's reinvention. Ben succeeds Kelsey Yoder and, while he'll have some big shoes to fill, SWAMP is confident that he will do an excellent job and add a new dimension of personality to the rest of the officers.

Guest Speaker: John Zollinger
Making intriguing shorts
John Zollinger, a faculty member of the A&M Foundation with a masters in screenwriting from USC, covered great topics like story structure and the differences between writing for a feature and a short film. He gave an excellent, inspiring talk on the importance of keeping your short unique by thinking about it from a different perspective. One interesting example he gave was a short about Halloween from a pumpkin's perspective.

Events: The Scavenger Hunt and Photowalk
Combining a love for photography and fun
On Friday, September 24th, SWAMPers split up into three teams and were given a list of locations and goals to photograph and then went off on a city-wide scavenger hunt. The winning team was comprised of Britney Butler, Katie Janak, Laura Oatman, and Jensen Yancey. They won because of their outstanding picture with President Loftin, in the President's house! The group went up to the President's house and simply asked him if he would take a picture with them. President Loftin, in his pajamas about to go to bed, kindly obliged going back up stairs to change in order to take his picture with the group. Since a picture with Loftin scored approximately a million points, the team won without any difficultly.

During the photowalk, SWAMPers covered a large portion of Texas A&M honing their photographic skills by taking a variety of pictures including landscapes, portraits, shots focusing on lighting, texture, form and a variety of other fun photographs. Most of the photos can be found on Facebook by the individual photographers but SWAMPer Phillip Lim has created an archive of all his photos where you can download the hi rez images here.