“Religion and Students at the UI” Campus screening • noon Oct. 29, Room 223 of Gregory Hall Urbana Public Television • 7 p.m. Oct. 23 • 9 p.m. Oct. 31 • 9:30 p.m. Nov. 2 • 6 p.m. Nov. 5 On the Web The documentary also will be posted sometime this fall on the College of Media’s Web site. | | |
Whether your tastes run to “March of the Penguins” or “An Inconvenient Truth” or “Fahrenheit 9/11,” there’s no denying it is a golden age for documentary films.
“There are more documentaries being made now than have ever been made,” says UI journalism professor Jay Rosenstein, whose own documentaries have appeared on the PBS series “P.O.V.” and “Independent Lens,” and have won numerous awards, including an Emmy.
He likes the documentary for its power to affect change, Rosenstein said. “It’s really a way that you can move people’s minds.” He also likes the form because it allows for greater depth than most broadcast news, and for its freedom to combine journalism with artistic elements like music.
So it was a natural for Rosenstein last spring to start Journalism 480, a hands-on class on how to make a documentary. He also thought it was an important addition to the department’s program, which had been without a documentary production class for several years. In the fast-changing world of journalism, the students entering the field will need “a wide variety of skills for a wide variety of applications,” Rosenstein said.
What wasn’t natural was trying to do it all, from idea development to finished product, within a single semester. “There’s just a lot of stuff to do,” he said.
Finding an easy topic would have seemed a good idea. But after weeks of brainstorming, research and deliberation, the class of five landed on the challenging topic of religion on campus.
“From a documentary point of view, it’s got huge things working against it,” Rosenstein said. “You’re talking about something that’s internal, that can’t be shown, in a medium where something has to be shown.” The subject also provides no natural story structure, no obvious chronology, he said.
At the same time, Rosenstein said he liked the students’ choice of a student-based story. “That’s who they are, and that’s what they have access to,” he said. And their stories are more important than they often believe, he said.
The resulting 18-minute film, “Religion and Students at the UI.,” is about the transition of the college years and how students’ views and habits of faith are often a central part of that.
One student in the film, Amanda, describes how she suffered through a rough and lonely freshman year, but then found a friend whose practice of her Catholic faith she admired. The friendship led her to the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center on campus and a religiously minded community where she found a home. She planned to become a missionary after graduation.
Alex, who had gone to Lutheran schools for nine years prior to college, talks of how he no longer goes to church. Away from his parents’ influence and prodding, “I just didn’t feel the need,” he says. But he also describes how his college experience has made him more open-minded toward other people.
The third student subject of the film, Matt, is a very observant Orthodox Jew, living in a Jewish fraternity. He talks about why his faith and Jewish identity are so important to him and how he must adjust his life around his religious practices. He gets help from his supportive friend and roommate.
The campus diversity demonstrated in those three accounts was part of what drove the journalism students in their choice of subject, according to Chris Bacon, a graduate student and former television reporter, originally from West Frankfort, Ill., who was part of the class.
“It’s an important time in people’s lives … and you’re influenced by so many different things, and you’re also exposed to so many different cultures and people,” he said. “I just think there are fascinating stories that can come from it.”
The three stories also demonstrate a point made by at least two people in the film about students and religion during the college years. “There’s either a falling away or a greater immersion, and the falling away can be temporary or it can be permanent,” says associate dean of students Ruth McCauley.
“Either they’re pretty devout or they don’t hold for any type of religion at all,” says Father Gregory Ketcham, a priest with the Newman Center.
The students in the film also seem to reflect a point made at the close of it by Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, from the Chabad Center for Jewish Life. “I think the college years are often the most important years of developing our identity … the walls that we built and the walls that we took down are the walls that are going to last for a lifetime,” Tiechtel said.
Just getting a subject for the film took weeks, but that was intentional, Rosenstein said. “The early work is so important to the process; it might be more important than anything else,” he said.
The students have to do the research to know if suggested topics will work in the time allotted and without traveling far from campus, he said. They have to determine if they have good sources who are available and willing to participate.
Next comes the shooting, which must be done in about three weeks, and with the complication of working around the schedules of both the students in the class and their sources, Rosenstein said. Then comes the transcribing of interviews word for word – “a tedious, boring, laborious process,” he said.
The transcripts are shared with everyone in the class and each must write a full script. Then Rosenstein picks one to serve as a framework, but melds it with choice sections from the others. The students then work together to fashion a rough-cut script.
“I think the toughest thing was deciding what to keep in the film and what not,” said Scott Frankel, a senior from Glenview, Ill., majoring in print journalism, with a minor in cinema. There was a lot of good material that just didn’t work in the story line, he said.
About the time they had a rough-cut script together, “that’s really the point at which the semester runs out,” Rosenstein says. Much of the editing, mostly by students still on campus, came after the semester was over.
Frankel said he was very satisfied with the result. Given the time constraints and the subject matter, “I think we got the best we possibly could,” he said.
For Frankel, “documentaries really incorporate the best of journalism and the best of cinema.” Documentaries can “really connect with people” on a deeper level, he said, “especially if you’re feeling a similar situation to what they are (in the film).”
It wasn’t long after the project was finished before Frankel was working on his own small production, with video camera and computer. He traveled with a friend to Thailand for several weeks in June and July, and as part of it shot a documentary, involving the friend, about the country and the challenges of a cross-cultural relationship. He finished the 85-minute film in late September.
Rosenstein hopes to teach the class again in fall 2009.
Among his own previous documentaries are “In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports” (1997) and “The Amasong Chorus: Singing Out” (2004). Scheduled for release sometime in the coming months is “The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today,” about Vashti McCollum of Champaign, whose 1945 lawsuit set the precedent for the separation of church and state in public schools.
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