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Student Video Projects Aim for Airtime

Students in the "Media and Innovation" class produce quirky, moving and clever videos with an eye towards media platforms

This video profiles a restaurant in Chapel Hill that does not require its customers to pay to eat. It was produced for an assignment in the "Media and Innovation" course by students Zach Mooring, Hanna Metaferia and Zan Lowe-Skillern.

 

For their final projects, students in Duke's "Media and Innovation" course had eight minutes each to convince a panel of professionals that their video features should be shown on a major TV show or website.

Julian Spector
Senior Julian Spector presents his media project.

Senior Julian Spector pitched a quirky video on the hybrid-powered ELF vehicle for the Discovery Channel. Sophomore Grace Oathout produced a tender story about the North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center for children with disabilities, which she said would be a perfect segment for the local ABC affiliate WTVD. Senior Hanna Metaferia whet the class' appetite with a profile of the Durham doughnut shop Monuts; she said it should air on the Food Network.

Moderating the presentations Dec. 3 in The Link was course instructor Amy Unell, a Duke alumna and founder of the Durham-based StoryTales Productions.

"Through prior conversations with students, I knew of the strong interest and need to explore the intersection of multimedia storytelling and entrepreneurship in the community-at-large," Unell said.

"I hope students in the class develop a better understanding of the power of storytelling to motivate, educate and inspire," she said.

Serving as judges for the class were alumnus Bill Hayes, president of Figure 8 Films; Stefan Swiat, a journalist in the DeWitt Wallace Center’s Media Fellows Program; Cara Rousseau, social media manager at Duke Admissions and News and Communications; and James Todd, video manager at Duke News and Communications.

Unell's co-instructor for the course was Kimberly Jenkins, an entrepreneur, alumna and former university trustee. The teaching assistant was senior Danny Nolan, president of Duke Student Broadcasting (DSB). The videos produced by the class will be highlighted on the "M&I" tab of the DSB website.