It was called “Magnum,” our little movie about a bunch of ragtag students just trying to make a commercial to sell a dildo.

Several classmates and I shot the faux-commercial in Jim Gabour’s Intro to Digital Filmmaking class last fall. What we ended up presenting in class as our “film” — if one can call it that — was a short comedy about several students who had to make a commercial for an advertising class. They errantly choose a dildo as their product, and, of course, all sorts of silly hijinx ensue.

The movie has all the jump cuts, awful writing and YouTube acting you can expect from a student film. It’s borderline incoherent, but we still learned more about storytelling and basic film techniques through making that film than most other classes taught at Loyola.
This is at the heart of the Loyola digital filmmaking program, which next semester will stretch from three classes (the intro class, Video Editing and Video Writing/Directing) into a full-fledged Film Studies program.

Students right now are chugging cameras and editing video to complete their projects in the intro class, Video Editing and Directing classes.

Loyola couldn’t be better for it. Gabour brings to the table a hands-off approach to teaching, letting students learn what works — and what doesn’t —  essentially on their own. He understands that textbooks and lectures do little to teach students about the medium. It’s all about experience and getting time to play with the camera and video editing software.

I learned a lot about experience through class trips in the two filmmaking classes I took here at Loyola. In the intro class we visited a shooting of “K-Ville,” a television show about the New Orleans Police Department that was perhaps more of a sham than “Magnum,” and got to see a football field of sets and lights. In the Video Editing class we took a trip to the New Orleans Arena and got to walk through a live truck that was going to broadcast the Hornets game that night.

Both trips made us wide-eyed and filled us with ambitions of working in the industry, all while giving us practical information that could translate to our products.

All three filmmaking classes are available for enrollment as of Wednesday, Nov. 19. Just remember before signing up: the stories are yours. The characters are yours. And most importantly, the movie is yours.

But be careful, because as is the case with our terrible little film, whatever you create will have to be yours, too.