Joel Warren 10, is starting Lewis-Palmer High School’s film club. Joel wants to start this club so that he can expose more students to different film genres. He also wants to open an opportunity for students interested in film to be able to meet with each other and collaborate.

“The main reason I’m starting it is just because it’s a great avenue to meet people who are like-minded and also introduce them to some of my favorite films,” Warren said.

While Warren would love to make the club a film-making club he believes it would be too challenging, so the club will be mostly for film analysis.

“We will, about every week or so, look at a new film. Particularly, it will be an independent, foreign or classic film,” Warren said. “ Analyze different elements of it. The story telling of it, the cinematography, the performances, the whatever, the more technical side of things,” Warren said. 

On top of the films Joel analyzes, he also creates films. Once he graduates from high school, Warren wants to become a director.

“I have made one thing that technically is considered a feature film. It’s a film called “Back In The Deli Department”,” Warren said. “ As far as a lot of my more serious scripts that I have developed for feature length films, I have not necessarily gotten them off the ground yet, however, I do plan to finish my film, “Camp Goggles” by the end of 2021,” Warren said. 

Warren has been interested in films since he was a small child. He had always had this love for the arts, especially film.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I would just watch movies. I was obsessed with movies. I would watch “Toy Story 2” leaving the VHS on rewind. Just watch it again and re-watch it again. I just found this love for the arts just kind of on general but mostly film in that it’s a way of expressing yourself without necessarily getting too deep.”

When Warren becomes a director he wants to mainly work on independent films, which are short films produced outside major film studios. He wants to work on these so he can maintain creative control over his pieces.

“I feel like independent film is really important to me because I feel like my entire life I’ve loved movies, but after a while I kinda got bored with them so I started seeking out more experimental, weirder stuff and it has been generally a very thought provoking experience to take on a lot of the newer films of today in which smaller creators are given the ability to make whatever they want without studio control. It’s a lot more freeing to watch people express their true visions without any corporate interventions. So I’d like to expose more people to that,” Warren said.

Above every other aspect of film, Warren likes making the films the most.

“The making of film does pose a lot more challenges. I can easily sit down and watch a movie and just critique it and try to understand the deeper meaning of it easily. But when it comes to film making there’s a lot more challenges that can get in the way,” Warren said. 

Warren especially enjoys film because it helps him better his mental state. It can help him to get over some of the challenges he faces every day. 

“Like my social anxiety for example, it’s a very social thing to do to get tons of people to make a movie with you,” Warren said. ‘It definitely poses more challenges, but it’s something that I feel like in the end is a lot more rewarding to do.”.