With their cameras, tripods and computers, the Neutral Density Club, previously known as REX Productions, can be seen filming their latest short film or meeting at lunch to review footage and discuss editing processes. The student-run club allows the members to go through all the steps to make a complete film, from brainstorming script ideas to editing the final touches. Senior Neel Chaudhari, president of Neutral Density Club, shares his thoughts on the upcoming year.
El Estoque: What’s different this year?
Neel Chaudhari: The biggest difference this year is obviously that we changed our names. Last year we were called REX Productions, and we rebranded to Neutral Density this year.
We decided to change this year because previous years, a lot of our films are kind of focused on a more serious drama aspect. If you go on our Youtube channel, you can see a lot of drama films or serious films. These were not bad films, [but] we wanted to move away, explore more ideas, explore more different editing practices, explore different genres and so we thought that the best way to do this is to change an image in school. We thought we would do this by rebranding our entire club which is why we went with neutral density films which is the type of lenses that a lot of filmmakers produced and we thought it fit perfectly.
EE: What are you most excited for this year?
NC: I’m most excited that I will be able to explore alternate films as the president this year. I guess I’ll be deciding a lot more of what films and what genres we will be exploring. So I’m excited to explore some different types of film – before we haven’t really done much action or comedy films. So that’s something I really want to work on this year.
