Though I’ve often used popular culture to discuss concepts, many of my blogs have been very oriented to my academic passion of organizational behavior. This post is different as it’s more of a reflection regarding my favorite time of the year.
Topics: Campus Life, students, Student Life, Michael Urick, MSMOE
The Monastery Run Improvement Project Video Project
One of the symposium's coordinators was Dr. Caryl Fish, associate professor of chemistry, and she opened up the festivities with a brief history of the project. As part of her presentation, she showed a video that I put together at her request.
This style of video is my preferred style because the story telling is born in the editing. We didn't start with a traditional script. Dr. Fish gave me an outline that I used when I conducted the interviews. Then, once all of the interviews were complete, I was able to weave a narrative from their answers. A professor of mine once dubbed this style of editing as "organic editing" because the content dictates the flow of the story telling.
This style can be more difficult to put together because it can't fall back on a voiceover. I have to find the story in the subjects' words. That is where I benefit from being the interviewer. I know what I need, and I can continue to ask questions until the interviewers fill in the gaps.
In this case, I chose to interview Br. Norman last. That way, I could use his interview as the contextual glue for the others. (Learn about the origin of this painting of Br. Norman at the wetlands in the video.)
Very early on in the video, Dr. Cynthia Walter, professor of biology, says that the MRIP was a "great story about how students initiate and foster projects at Saint Vincent." The same could be said for a good portion of this video.
I relied on footage taken from two student-produced documentaries produced about our wetlands. The first was When the Water Ran Orange, which was produced in 2005 by students, Brandi Lux and Becki Polaski. The cutaways to participants, Bob Hedin, Greg Phillips and Wes Gordon were taken from that project, along with some graphs and charts.
The second was from Where Are We? The Wetlands produced in 2007 by students, Jared Bundy and Alex Byers. They shot remarkable nature footage at the wetlands in the summer of 2007, and it is footage that I could not have shot myself because of I produced this later version in the fall.
Watch their version to see what shots of theirs I used.
Topics: communication, digital media, broadcasting, filmmaking, degrees in communication, communication degrees, video, videos, documentary, science, nature, wetlands, students