College of Fine Arts and Communication
The Pointer
nmeye177@uwsp.edu
The College of Fine Arts and Communication is bringing another successful semester to a close. The semester was filled with highlights that were enjoyed not just by the campus but by the community as well. From the theater department’s production of “Hair” that generated a lot of interest, to the cross-departmental production of a pirate movie to accompany acclaimed composer Charlie Barnett’s 14-minute musical score “The Far Tortoogas,” it’s safe to say it was a successful semester for students of the college.
“This has been a great year to highlight student success,” said Dean Jeff Morin. “The cross-departmental pirates project pulled a lot of students together who don’t typically get to work together on creative events, and our first production of the theater season “Never the Sinner” has been selected to move forward for regional consideration for a national competition.”
The dean seemed pleased with everything the department has accomplished this semester and the further developing of the college’s relationship with the community.
“Working with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra really brought a lot of energy and attention to campus at a time when it’s important to highlight our relationship with the community,” said Morin.
For some students, though, the work of the past semester has yet to come to complete fruition. Students in Professor John Little’s Communication 356 class have been working all semester on a documentary film concentrating on two sides of a story involving Nestle Corporation and their efforts to put a water processing plant in Wisconsin.
“I saw this really interesting story where the voting public of the state of Wisconsin made a decision to reject a bid by Nestle Corporation to build a water processing plant in Wisconsin,” said Professor Little. “It turned out that if they had voted to do so, the water that would have been consumed in producing the product for Nestle, taking that out of the natural systems, local trout streams would have suffered, local economies would have suffered.”
After Nestle was rejected by Wisconsin, they reworked their pitch and went to Michigan, where the voters accepted and the environment has since felt the effects. Professor Little saw the class as a way to capture both sides of this unique story and give his students real world experience making a documentary film.
The class is divided into four groups, all of which are presided over by graduate student Erin Jasperson: a group examining Wisconsin; a group examining Michigan; a group they’ve coined “the necklace”, which does research into fundamental concepts of the environmental effects, and a reflexive group whose task is documenting the production of the film.
Students have worked tirelessly to make the film the best it can be, putting in long hours and traveling across Wisconsin and Michigan to do interviews and capture the story on their own dime. Professor Little was extremely pleased with the work of his group, repeatedly calling them the best students he’s ever worked with.
“This class has taken me further than any other course; it took me out of the classroom into the homes of people who fought to save the Earth’s water, and it made me appreciate the quote, don’t let school get in the way of your education even more,” said director of the Wisconsin group, Jeremy Kraemer.
The group has finished principle filming completely with HD cameras and is working their way through the editing phases, but there is still a long way to go.
Working on the project will get more difficult in mid-January as Professor Little will be leaving for Oman after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to teach and do research on non-fiction media. Professor Little went into the project realizing that they may not finish the project in 12 weeks, and isn’t expecting the project to be completely done until next fall.
When the semester ends, a few students, along with Jasperson, will carry on with the production of the film as an independent study until Professor Little returns in the summer. Upon completion, the group will take the film to festivals and tell the world the story they captured. Professor Little hopes the story will empower the public.
“That’s what we’re doing, I hope for the public,” said Little, “giving them the power to recognize, in the things that come across their desk in the newspaper or on the Internet that they actually have a lot more power than they think.”
