Before Camosun alumnus Nicolas Ihmels started Nic’s Flicks, the YouTube channel, he was most well known for Nic’s Flicks, the column. In fact, for three or so years, Ihmels ran the column right here in Nexus before eventually moving on to UVic, where he plans to complete his studies. But while the medium he will now express himself within has changed, the content has not, and his passion for film and its developments are still palpable.
The channel, he says, explores up-to-date topics in the movie industry and will do so with a panel, eventually, made up of several other UVic students to bring together a variety of voices.
“It’s reviews, it’s news stories, it’s casting decisions, it’s box-office forecast,” says Ihmels. “It’s like a lot of the Nexus stuff I did: the list of top 10 best movies of the year and most-anticipated summer stuff. There will be a lot of that on the channel.”
What prompted the creation of the channel, Ihmels says, is an inner need to fill out a community for himself that he feels lacks. He hopes most to bring more students on board to best serve the channel’s purpose.
“Most of my community is up at Nexus, it’s up at Camosun,” says Ihmels. “And I wanted to create the same community there. So how this channel started is me exploring ways to do that, to create that.”
But Ihmels is not alone in his need for community. The channel comes as a support beam to a friend in need, acting to help now co-host Jason McCracken through a particularly difficult time.
“Last Christmas, my best friend Jason had a really, really bad time. I had to let him come in and sleep on the couch a little bit. And he spent Christmas with my family because he was having a really bad time. One of the things he said that would help him was he wanted to do a YouTube channel on movies with me,” says Ihmels. “So that’s part of the major driving force of this channel… helping him to get what he needs.”
Ihmels says that videos will be uploaded once a week: filmed on Saturdays, edited on Sundays, and posted to YouTube by either Monday or Tuesday, with the help of McCracken. Unlike his 450-word column, where words and grammar must be kept succinct, Ihmels will dedicate several hours to movie topics through long-form videos.
“They’re probably going to be at least two hours,” he says. “They’re going to consist of five topics. But we’re probably going to start shorter because it’s two of us. But once we have more people, we’ll probably get longer and longer.”
The channel will as well include a live chat under videos for viewers to interact and share opinions. But while this format fosters community, Ihmels hopes to emphasize a safe environment for dialogue, where viewers may safely comment.
“I want to make it clear… that this is a respectful place,” he says. “Because we’re dealing with a lot of other people’s opinions, please do not attack them… It’s my responsibility to keep everyone safe on the channel, and that’s part of it.”
But it takes a village, and Nic’s Flicks hopes to begin building a community at UVic—hiring editors, panelists, and a marketing team of UVic students—in tandem with his deep appreciation for film.
“If [students are] at all connected to the movie world, it’s like a lot of that stuff. And it’s a great way to support me, to support your fellow students, it’s a great way to support people… It’s all about movies. If you like movies, you’ll like this channel,” says Ihmels. “That’s the whole crux of it.”