Filming Paris

The stories we tell as a society are often inspired by the context in which we find ourselves. For AUP students, that tends to mean Paris – the joys, discoveries and sometimes challenges of life in the City of Light. Student clubs are a great outlet for these experiences, and, at AUP, students have a huge say in the kinds of clubs and organizations they create in order to express themselves.

One great example of this is the Creative Production Club, which meets once a week to channel students’ creative energy into collaborative projects. Founded in 2019 by undergraduate Allen Blackwell, the club initially aimed to provide a space for students of all experience levels to discuss film and the filmmaking process; but as the club’s current President, Marteena Mendelssohn, explains, today it takes the term “creative production” in a much broader sense, expanding to projects like scriptwriting and podcasting. “We have an event coming up this semester that’s a DJ workshop!” she says.

Marteena, who is currently a junior majoring in creative writing and minoring in film and marketing management, also notes that collaboration and peer support are key to the club’s success – club members aim to create an environment in which all students can express themselves and work together. Members have access to AUP’s in-house multimedia resources, which include film equipment loans and a production studio in the Quai d’Orsay Learning Commons, and they also make regular use of the city around them. Recent projects have seen club members create a music video for a student’s song release, working closely with the singer’s manager on creative direction, and help a local short-film director with an on-location shoot in the Bois de Boulogne forest on the edge of Paris.