By Christy Bae | Event and Outreach Coordinator
A major update on campus has been the establishment of a Digital Media Hub. The Digital Media Hub provides an important space where refugee students can produce recordings and other media expressing their experience and perspective. This space features new computers for digital media production and includes a soundproof room. The computers have been installed with the Premiere Pro video editing program, allowing for advanced video editing lessons and activities; and the soundproof space allows for students and staff to edit films, record interviews, and/or make sound recordings.
Students can also learn valuable technology and storytelling skills, expanding potential professional and extra-curricular opportunities. With the equipment available, students are also able to draw upon skills they have learned in an on-campus documentary course, Documentary Filmmaking, to make their own documentaries reflecting their life experiences. During this lockdown, students have made more than 50 short documentary films over the past two semesters as part of the final project of the documentary course.
To accommodate the majority of students who are taking classes in their homes, the course syllabus has been designed in a way so that students can create films with the resources that they have in their homes such as their laptops, mobile phones, etc. The course instructor has also developed video tutorials on video editing and cinematography students can use to understand the techniques they have studied properly. The instructor has said the course is “helping our students to create a new voice, a new way for them to present their thoughts.”
During the lockdown in spring 2020, the Media Hub was open for students’ use and many students used it for their academic and personal projects while they were on campus. At this time, most students have returned home, however a few students from particularly vulnerable communities remain on campus. The Media Hub remains open for any student still on campus. When faculty are back on campus, the Performing Arts Director hopes to enlarge the video editing room to create more space for all editing panels.
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