:Student Media: The Documentary Project

I have spent the last three years of my life attending George Mason University. Most of my time on campus has been spent in the Office of Student Media, the office that powers the newspaper Broadside, magazine VoxPop, radio station WGMU, cable network MCN, website Connect2Mason and more. During my time here, I’ve worked with almost every campus media group possible: I’ve been a photo editor, staff writer, talk show host, multimedia director and all-around media drone. For reasons unbeknownst to myself, I’ve worked in this office since I arrived at school and can’t seem to pull myself away, so it’s only appropriate that my latest and final campus project will focus entirely on student media.

My current plan is to make a documentary that looks at the office over the course of this semester, capturing snippets of the drama that goes down here. Because, as in any office, there is tons of drama. There’s a cast of interesting characters, an always-active setting and… well, I’m hoping there will be a decent plot. If nothing seems to be naturally developing over the next few months, I’ll have to rethink my angle and really come up with a solid way to frame the story. I’ll probably have to do that anyway, but if the office follows the tradition of past years, there will hopefully be a naturally flowing storyline that I can pick up on and follow.

There are a few reasons this project will be extremely difficult:

• – I know nothing about making documentaries. To be honest, I know very little about working with video in general. My specialties are digital photography and feature writing.
• – It’s my senior semester of college and I’m extremely busy with classes, an internship and a nerdy music hobby. This doesn’t leave much time for documentaries.
• – I’m not sure exactly how much Student Media wants me to make an honest documentary. I don’t plan on making a propaganda piece.
• – Did I mention I’m not sure how to develop a plot? Or record good sound? Or work with office lighting? Or make a documentary at all?

But even with all of those unknowns, I’m barging forward and seeing what comes of it. It may be a total failure, but that’s okay. I’ve failed at plenty of things before and I’m still doing okay.

I’ll be using this blog to track my progress, thoughts and anything else that could possibly relate. I imagine I’ll be shooting a great deal of things that have no end use in the doc, so I’ll work on editing small pieces and throwing them up here as practice. If you’ve got thoughts or ideas on what you’d like to see, let me know. My next steps are to contact all the student media groups and hope they agree to participate (I’ve already talked to a few and have the advisor’s go-ahead), then start getting permission forms signed and setting up interviews.

In the meantime, I’m headed to a video class where I’ll hopefully be learning to improve my sound and lighting. It would be nice to graduate with a sweet looking project to prove I know a little about the multimedia I’m so in love with.

Wish me luck!

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