When Bardstown junior Hannah Bowman came to college three years ago to study film, she said she couldn’t wait to get her hands on a camera.

At that time, she didn’t know it would take two years until she could actually start shooting.

Madisonville senior Jacob Short said it’s “kinda killer” to be a freshman or sophomore and have a drive to be involved in such projects but not have an opportunity to make films.

That was one of the main reasons Bowman came up with an idea of launching the WKU Film Production Club last fall to give a chance for underclassmen to collaborate with upperclassmen and get a real life and hands-on experience in shooting film.

“There is already a WKU Film Club, but it focuses on watching movies and discussing them afterwards,” said Bowman, who is co-president of the WKU Film Production Club. “This group is just for producing our own films.”

Even though the idea of making a new film production club was Bowman’s, she said she would not have started this project without the encouragement and help of her friend Short, who is a literature major and film minor and who now serves as the other co-president of the Film Production Club.

“I’m not very ambitious on my own,” Short said. “I want to say that I am kind of fuel for the fire, maybe.”

After the club was launched, the word quickly spread around campus, and now there are around 15 people participating and attending weekly meetings every Thursday at 6 p.m.

The club is still very new and currently taking small steps to involve more people and start working on the first project, which will be a short film hopefully launched at the end of the next semester, Bowman said.

Short is a script-writer and has a lot of ideas and scripts ready to be made into movies.

However, Bowman likes doing technical stuff and actually shooting movies.

“What we are going for is collaboration,” Short said. “If it is just one person’s project, I feel like it’s elevating to a more important status than anybody else, and that is what we want to avoid.”

Bowman said although movies can cost a lot of money, she’s not concerned about that yet.

When the time comes, she said the club would fundraise around campus and apply for financial help from SGA.

“You can make a really good film with no money whatsoever, and you can make a bad film with a huge budget,” Bowman said.

As for the future goals and expectations for the first movie produced by the WKU Film Production Club, Bowman and Short agreed they want to participate in the Western Kentucky Film Festival.

According to the festival’s website, “Originally a two-day event, the festivities have swelled to as many as five days, featuring experimental and documentary cinema, as well as music videos, animation and traditional narrative films.”

Short won the award in this festival in 2011 with his script and as co-producer for the movie “Estriatus.”