Confederation College's graduating film students will be showing the fruits of their hours of filmmaking labour Thursday night.

The college's annual Film Night will see about 30 short films by the film program's second-year students screened for the public.

The films, which range in length from about eight to 10 minutes, are the focus of the two-year program's final year — the students go through pre-production, actual filming, and then post-production — and give students valuable experience with the movie-making process, said film professor Lee Chambers.

"The main part of Film Night is to celebrate the hard work they do over the course of the year," he said. "Even a student who might not be 100 per cent happy with their film for whatever reason, still may learn a lot."

Mix of emotions over public screening

"The goal is that when they leave here they go off and learn from that, and make another film that's even better."

Student Brittany Hanlon-Lamont said showing her film to the public for the first time is a bit nerve-wracking.

"I'm excited for it to actually be seen, but very nervous to get the reactions from the crowd," she said of her film, The Last Shot. "I'm hoping everything goes well with it."

This year was a bit tougher than usual for the film students due to the five-week faculty strike, which started in October, shortly after the school year got underway.

Faculty strike took its toll

The colleges extended their semesters to make up for lost classroom time, but the break took its toll regardless, said student RJ Nadon, who's screening his film Hand-In-Hand on Thursday.

"It was hard in the sense that we had basically just gotten going and everybody was really excited," he said. "You get your idea starting to roll, and then just as you're about to, maybe, go into more in-depth pre-production, the strike hits."

"We weren't even allowed to use the gear," Nadon said. "We couldn't talk to teachers about anything for school, so you just sit for five weeks, and you lose a lot of motivation."

Hanlon-Lamont agreed, saying overcoming the downtime was tough.

"It just dropped my motivation," she said. "I was almost ready to get out of the gate, and then I had the five weeks. I ended up changing my idea because I overthought it."

"It took a while."

Film Night will take place Thursday April 26 at the lecture theatre in the college's Shuniah Building. Doors open at 7 p.m., with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. The screenings start at 7:30 p.m, and admission is free.