In the middle of the woods near Shaver's Creek, amid the snow-laden willow trees and hastily assembled nests of hibernating mammals, stands a much larger construction of a wholly human origin.

It's a fort, measuring nearly 15 feet by 20 feet, which was built for a senior film project titled, appropriately enough, The Fort. The project is just one of 13 being filmed this semester, all for a class that acts as the culminating experience of many film majors' college education.

Students taking the class aren't just handed a camera and told to go off and make a film. Even with three full years of education behind them, seniors have to attend lessons on advanced production techniques before they can begin their films.

Maura Shea, lecturer of communications and one of the three faculty members who help students produce their senior film projects, described the class in simple terms.

"It's three credits for each semester of senior year," she said. "There's class twice a week. In the fall, we do workshops on equipment and production. In the spring, the groups of students making the films do presentations on their progress on some days, and on others, have small meetings."

Despite all the work involved, some film majors said they enjoy the opportunity the class presents.

Megan Beshalske (senior-film and video), producer of Topher Hammond, said the project grants many students their first chance to make a film of decent length.

"Before this project, students only have three to five minutes to show what they can do," she said. "Here, you could have something up to 15 or 20 minutes. It's something that other people in the industry are doing."

If the film is completed in time, students can enter it into the Penn State Student Film Festival, which occurs at the end of every spring semester, said Kim Hogue (senior-film and video), producer of The Fort.

"If we can get our film done by April, we want it to be shown there," she said. "It's one of our main goals."

Andrew Lieberman (senior-film and video), director of Topher Hammond, has similar aspirations.

"The Student Film Festival is a competition, so you're not guaranteed to get in," he said. "It would be an honor though."

That potential honor can come at a rather high price. Students are responsible for financing their own films. This leaves each group with some hard choices, such as whether to shoot with film or digital video.

Ben McCambridge (senior-film and video), director of The Fort, feels the advantages of shooting on film make it worth the format's extra cost.

"Digital video has made a lot of recent advances, but it's still not close to the look of film, the depth and the contrast," he said. "It still can't duplicate the image of light hitting paper."

Senior filmmakers said they enjoy the opportunity to make films at such a high level of independence no matter which format they choose.

"Being a filmmaker, the best experience you get is by making actual films," Lieberman said. "We learn a lot of the practical stuff, which helps, but I feel that our best education is when we're out there doing it."

McCambridge agreed.

"We're definitely doing it because we want to," he said. "We don't talk about grades or credits; we're just making these films because it's what we came to school for. It doesn't even feel like a class; it feels like a community of filmmakers."