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News 12 Staff

823spotlightnj2_2025-08-23-09-20-51

Nicole L. Thompson sitting here with me is a film director and author of the book Film Dreams. She's also the founder of the Newark Film School and the founder of the Black Film Alliance. Let's talk about that school. How did it get started and when? Yes, so as a filmmaker, a lot of people in the community would come up to me and ask, hey, I wanna learn how to make films. How do I get involved? where do I start? And that's how I was inspired to create the Newark Film School. I wanted to create an avenue so that people in the community would have access to filmmaking and not just um people who are in primary school but people who wake up one morning and say hey I'm, I wanna be a filmmaker and I don't know where to start so I wanted to think about designing programs. For early career adults or even mid-career adults, people of all ages that can have an avenue and a space to to learn filmmaking. How does it work? People register online? Yes, so people visit www.norarkfilmschool.org. They look at our course catalog and they look at the different instructors that we have. We have a group of about 6 instructors who are teaching a variety of different subjects and they can choose a course to take. How often do they attend classes for these courses? So the courses are in different segments, so it's throughout the year periodically, but we also have trainings as well that are free to the community. So we have a mixture of one day trainings, we have also six week courses, so we have uh uh a variety. How many students would you say you cater to? We have a wide age range of students that we've catered to, but we have instructed over 50 students this past month. Wow, that's a lot. Have you seen success stories with the students who have graduated? Yes, we, well, the program it's, it's, it's workforce training so we haven't had uh any type of certification. However, in terms of those who have completed a course, they've been able to take start from no knowledge of filmmaking to learning their first script to writing their first script and directing their first short film so I've. Seeing vast transformation. What year did you launch this school? So we launched in 2024 and we were able to, uh, once again start offering courses and then start offering trainings for the community and I actually began uh developing this while I was a student at Harvard University getting my master's in education.

https://vod.prod.alticeustech.com/transcode/0d32c72d-d62c-43d6-a419-2fb745f8b910/0d32c72d-d62c-43d6-a419-2fb745f8b910.transcribe

823spotlightnj3_2025-08-23-09-49-34

Nicole L. Thompson sitting here with me is a film director and author of the book Film Dreams. She's also the founder of the Newark Film School and the founder of the Black Film Alliance. Let's talk about that school. How did it get started and when? Yes, so as a filmmaker, a lot of people in the community would come up to me and ask, hey, I wanna learn how to make films. How do I get involved? where do I start? And that's how I was inspired to create the Newark Film School. I wanted to create an avenue so that people in the community would have access to filmmaking and not just um people who are in primary school but people who wake up one morning and say hey I'm, I wanna be a filmmaker and I don't know where to start so I wanted to think about designing programs. For early career adults or even mid-career adults, people of all ages that can have an avenue and a space to to learn filmmaking. How does it work? People register online? Yes, so people visit www.norarkfilmschool.org. They look at our course catalog and they look at the different instructors that we have. We have a group of about 6 instructors who are teaching a variety of different subjects and they can choose a course to take. How often do they attend classes for these courses? So the courses are in different segments, so it's throughout the year periodically, but we also have trainings as well that are free to the community. So we have a mixture of one day trainings, we have also six week courses, so we have uh uh a variety. How many students would you say you cater to? We have a wide age range of students that we've catered to, but we have instructed over 50 students this past month. Wow, that's a lot. Have you seen success stories with the students who have graduated? Yes, we, well, the program it's, it's, it's workforce training so we haven't had uh any type of certification, however, in terms of those who have completed a course, they've been able to take start from no knowledge of filmmaking to learning their first script to writing their first script and directing their first short film so I've. Seeing vast transformation. What year did you launch this school? So we launched in 2024 and we were able to, uh, once again start offering courses and then start offering trainings for the community and I actually began uh developing this while I was a student at Harvard University getting my master's in education.

https://vod.prod.alticeustech.com/transcode/ee986322-719a-496f-adcd-980a136ca46f/ee986322-719a-496f-adcd-980a136ca46f.transcribe

823SPOTLIGHTNJTHREE_2025-08-23-12-26-12

Nicole L. Thompson joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the inspiration behind the new book, her community outreach and film projects. 

Spotlight New Jersey: Director and author Nicole L. Thompson

Nicole L. Thompson joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the inspiration behind the new book, her community outreach and film projects.

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