The Department of Film & Video at Columbia College in Chicago has purchased more than 100 GY-HM100 camcorders from JVC for its student productions.

One of the largest accredited film schools in the world, the department, housed in the college’s School of Media Arts, said the camcorders will be used for students completing its Foundations Program, a two-semester curriculum designed to introduce the students to professional filmmaking.

The JVC camcorders were chosen, the school said, because they record HD footage to inexpensive SDHC memory cards in the QuickTime .MOV file format. Students can drag files directly to the Final Cut Pro timeline on their Apple MacBook Pro laptops and begin editing immediately.

The faculty at Columbia College consulted with JVC when the ProHD camcorder line was being developed. During the spring 2009 semester, JVC donated a preproduction model of the GY-HM100 to the department so that 23 students could participate in a creative filmmaking opportunity developed by ad agency DDB/Chicago.

The university trains more than 12,500 students in over 120 undergraduate and graduate programs, including film and video, art and design, arts management, television, radio, music, and interactive multimedia.