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By MADISON MATHEWS
Johnson City Press
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Lights, camera, action!
That’s what a group of six students were busy learning this week at Milligan College as they began production Wednesday on two short documentaries produced in the college’s multimedia camp during the inaugural Fine Arts Academy.
A total of 21 students representing eight different states and two different countries were busy spending their week at the college taking part in one of the academy’s three concentrations, which included music, multimedia and theater.
The six high schoolers in the multimedia camp hit the ground running Monday as they spent all day learning about interviewing skills, basic reporting, how to handle a camera and the history of documentaries, among other subjects.
The group was then divided into two separate teams creating two short documentaries.
After spending several days learning the basics of crafting a documentary about the history of East Tennessee and the State of Franklin, 17-year-old Hannah Austin said her interest in filmmaking was rekindled once again thanks to Milligan’s program.
“I was kind of interested in film when I was younger, and then I kind of forgot about it, but then it kind of revived this year during my junior year of high school,” she said.
The rising senior from Dyersburg said the program has helped her figure out what kind of career she wants to pursue when it comes time to go to college.
Honing an interest in multimedia was one of the goal’s for the inaugural camp, according to Jim Dahlman, associate professor of communications.
“We’ve got a pretty good communications program at Milligan College, so I guess we’d like to share the wealth … ,” he said. “Plus, we consider this an art and something we would just like high school students to be aware of and get some experience with.”
Within the last year at Milligan, the communications curriculum has undergone some changes by merging emphases in broadcast and journalism into an emphasis in multimedia journalism.
Taking what they used throughout the last academic year, Dahlman, along with associate professors of communications Kenny Suit and Carrie Beth Swanay, took the six high schoolers through a multimedia boot camp of sorts.
“This is part of that effort to learn how to communicate in a multimedia world,” Dahlman said.
Fifteen-year-old Abi Bethea, of Toccoa, Ga., was interested in attending Milligan and wanted to see what she could learn by enrolling in the academy’s multimedia camp.
Being able to see what Milligan’s professors were like and how the campus operated was encouraging for Bethea. Getting the chance to learn to shoot and edit a documentary on the Gray Fossil Site was also a perk for Bethea, as she enjoyed getting to learn the process alongside the others in her group.
“I’m OK teaching myself, but it’s always better to be in the class environment and then just learning more about what it’s supposed to be like, I guess,” she said.
Bethea said she looks forward to possibly enrolling in the camp again next year, as well as possibly pursuing a career in multimedia journalism.
“I think it’s going to be a good start for maybe going out there. I would love to do that and this has made me love it more,” she said.
Fine Arts Academy Director Steffani Taylor said that was the whole goal behind the program.
“We wanted to promote our arts programs at Milligan and let students see arts as a viable career path. … We want to encourage them to see theater, media, storytelling and music as a career they can make a career out of,” she said.
Students enrolled in the camp will also receive dual enrollment credit.
Both groups of students in the multimedia camp will spend today and Friday editing their documentaries, which will be shown during a special presentation Friday at 7 p.m. in the Gregory Center on Milligan’s campus. The students from the music and theater programs will be presenting what they’ve been learning as well.
The theater camp concludes July 9 and will culminate with a special presentation of its own original production in the Gregory Center at 7 p.m.