Tucked into the southeast corner of Marion Knott Studios is a room with stark walls, concrete floors, a warehouse door, and a small counter for students to check out film equipment. The room is easy to miss as your attention is drawn away to the cathedral-sized stages just across the hall. Yet despite its unassuming location and appearance, this room, affectionately known as the Gold Room, is the beating heart of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

The Gold Room first got its name some 30 years ago when the film program used to store its few pieces of equipment in a yellow-painted room in Chapman’s Moulton Hall. What makes the current Gold Room critical to student success is its vast inventory of sophisticated equipment.

Although students can make and edit films with inexpensive tools nearly anyone can afford today, serious film students are anxious to get their hands on more sophisticated equipment. On Thursday afternoons, when crews prep and check out their equipment, the Gold Room is one of the most popular spots in Dodge.

loading truck with film equipment


“One of the things parents ask when they come for tours is if Dodge College has a Red camera,” says Gold Room manager Nick Peterson (MFA/Film Production ‘06). This relatively inexpensive, digital camera records in 4K and was the first affordable high quality digital camera. It’s also one of the few digital cameras that most film schools can afford, which is why so many people know and ask about it. Not only do we have two Red 1 cameras, we have four Sony F65’s and ten Sony F5’s, some of the highest quality digital cameras on the market.

“We also have an Arri Alexa, which is a high quality digital camera frequently used in television,” said Peterson. “You might be able to rent a camera like the Arri Alexa, but it’s unlikely you would be able to purchase one outright (the camera body alone starts at $75,000). Dodge College purchased the camera for Chapman Filmed Entertainment, and when they’re not using it for filming, we make it available to students for checkout.”

High quality cameras aren’t the only thing the Gold Room has to offer. Among the 10,000 pieces of equipment available, all of which can be reserved online, are the Tascam HS-P82, an audio recorder that can record up to eight microphones simultaneously and can synch audio with the video recording using digital time codes. Students also have access to Digital Intermediate Technician (DIT) media transfer stations, portable computers that allow filmmakers to quickly upload digital footage to a hard drive for editing and color correction.

“I went to a state school and their equipment room was little more than a storage closet,” says equipment operations assistant, Eunyoung Kim. “There was one person writing down your name and telling you when it was due back. There were no sound packages, no grip, and electric. The highest level camera they had was equivalent to Dodge’s HMC camera, which is a small digital camera that we check out to beginning students. When I first started working here, it seemed incredible that we had all of this equipment available for students. In many ways, it’s like working for a real film studio.”