Filmmaking is an incredibly diverse, fruitful, yet competitive industry. Globally, filmmakers vie for the chance for a streaming service to pick up their work or for it be featured in a film festival. However, only a small fraction of films end up making it to the silver screen.
At Northeastern, students are pushing to promote the films of their peers in innovative ways, starting starting their own platforms and organizing festivals to showcase student work in an effort to make a competitive field increasingly accessible for college students.
In 2023, Brynne Norquist — a fourth-year film major at Emerson College — founded Hiike, a data-driven platform that provides film festival recommendations to student filmmakers, at Emerson in November 2023 after being in a distribution program with students at 12 different film schools.
“Hearing from all those individuals really led me to want to do something bigger,” Norquist said.
Later, in June 2024, Tyler Knohl, a fourth-year data science and business administration combined major at Northeastern, joined Norquist as a co-founder. “Because I’m a data science and business major at Northeastern, having done startups in the past, [Hiike] was a one-stop-shop for me,” Knohl said.
The platform aims to “help revitalize the film festival landscape” as well as combat threats to the film industry. “In order to keep this industry equitable, we need to make sure the independent films and independent art are actually reaching the viewers,” Norquist said.
With Hiike, filmmakers can refine their search for film festivals to submit their work to and see if their film applies to the festivals’ criteria within seconds. Knohl and Norquist go into each film festival submission, pull all of their submission requirements, and input which films have been accepted in the past. This allows them to create a single point of contact for information about film festivals.
On campus, there is a growing demand for spaces for filmmakers, highlighted by North by Northeastern — an annual film festival run solely by students. Lucy Perkins, a third-year business administration and communication studies combined major, and Rylie Hepp, a fourth-year finance and environmental studies combined major, lead the film festival.
“[It’s about] giving [the College of Arts, Media and Design] and film students at Northeastern an opportunity to showcase their work,” Perkins said. “[It’s also about] creating a space where other people who were interested in film or were film students themselves could come together and appreciate student work.”
Last year, North By Northeastern hosted its biggest film festival yet, for which it sold upwards of 300 tickets, Perkins said. The festival highlighted several films by current students, faculty members and alumni of the university.
“The fact that we do have so many non-film students, I think it really speaks to the fact that there is a community at Northeastern that doesn’t necessarily want to make filmmaking their career, so they are not studying it at school, but are interested in it and want to engage with the topic,” Hepp said.
Perkins hopes that North by Northeastern will increase interest in CAMD’s programs. “I recognize that there is a lot of talent coming out of [CAMD], and I don’t think it necessarily gets the representation that it deserves, and it’s definitely not used as something to entice potential future students to come to the university,” Perkins said. “My long-long term goals for the festival would be something that the university could actually use to bring students to the school.”
Hiike and North by Northeastern have been stepping stones for being innovative and supporting fellow student filmmakers. Through them, students gain access to resources that can catapult their filmmaking career.
In the future, Hiike aims to “revitalize the independent film market,” Norquist said.
“These filmmakers who are going to have incredible tools because of all of this new technology that’s coming out, like with AI and things like that,” Knohl said. “There’s going to be a new generation of them, and they are going to need a new platform. That’s what Hiike is doing.”
