About

Purchase College's Filmmaking Institute is a four-week day program (not residential — no housing or dorm arrangement is described) for students entering grades 9–12, held on the SUNY Purchase campus in Purchase, NY. For 2026, the two sessions run back-to-back as one continuous offering, June 29–July 24, Monday–Friday, 9:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. (20 total class sessions).

Students work in small groups of four to five with a teacher or teaching assistant, spending mornings on short technique lessons — camera moves, green-screen effects, sound recording, slow motion — then putting each technique straight into practice by afternoon, either filming new material or moving into the edit bays for post-production. The curriculum runs the full production pipeline: script formatting in Hollywood-standard software, storyboarding and shot lists, pre-production planning and location scouting, directing and scene coverage, stage combat for safely staged on-camera fights, documentary technique, music video production, camera and lighting fundamentals, field audio, and editing in Adobe Premiere and iMovie, finishing with visual effects, ADR, and final audio mixing. Students must supply their own camcorder, DSLR, or a smartphone capable of shooting video; free tools are recommended for editing (iMovie, DaVinci Resolve) and screenwriting (WriterDuet, Fade In, Highland, Celtx). By the program's final day — which culminates in a public film festival for family and friends — students will have completed 8–10 original short films for their portfolio; some students have used these projects directly in film school applications. Certificates of completion require at least 80% class attendance. Content is restricted: no gratuitous violence, guns, or offensive language.

For 2026, tuition is $2,200 for a family's first registration, with a reduced $1,980 rate for a second family registration, Purchase College employees and alumni, Broadview families, and Pepsi employees (PepsiCo's global headquarters sits in Purchase, NY, adjacent to the college). Students can pair this course with Purchase's separate Acting on Camera Workshop or Writing for Film precollege offerings to round out a summer.