Colleen Kearney Rich

GMU-TV wins six Tellys for videos showcasing research, student programs

Colleen Rich — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 09:00:49 +0000

GMU-TV wins six Tellys for videos showcasing research, student programs Colleen Rich Tue, 07/07/2020 - 05:00

George Mason University’s GMU-TV was awarded six Tellys this year—two Golds, two Silvers, and two Bronzes—for excellence in the nonbroadcast/educational institution category for videos promoting the university’s research endeavors and programs. This is the most awards Mason’s television studio has won in one year.

Three of the awards went to Mason Research videos, which are part of a series GMU-TV created in collaboration with the Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Impact and the schools/colleges.

“We are very excited to be brought in to partner on the research videos and are very happy with how they turned out,” said Richard Wood, general manager and executive producer of GMU-TV. “This kind of collaboration is a perfect fit. There are so many brilliant and talented people at Mason making real impact on our world, the opportunity to share their story to a wider audience is a privilege.”

A variety of GMU-TV staffers worked on the videos.

“Often we assign a lead producer and then other staff members serve as crew and in various roles from director of photography to editor,” said Wood, who has a BA in communication from Mason.

“The Mason Impact,” one of the videos winning a Gold Telly, was created by GMU-TV for the 2019 New Student Convocation in collaboration with the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR). The team working on this video was Mike Kurec, Wood, Stacey Rathbun, Andy Riddle, and Jessica Riddle.

Also receiving a Gold Telly was “Concussion Biomarkers,” which is one of a series of videos that GMU-TV created for the Mason Research series. This video focuses on the work of Mason researchers Emanuel “Chip” Petricoin and Shane Caswell on diagnosing and monitoring concussions. Kurec, Wood, and Rathbun worked on this project.

Winner of a Silver Telly was another video in the Mason Research series, “The Enslaved Peoples of George Mason,” which focuses on the historical research being conducted by Mason students on the men, women and children enslaved at Gunston Hall. Wood, Rathbun, and Mike Aitken worked on this video.

A profile of Mason chemistry major Mosufa Zainab, “Mosufa: Fighting Superbugs,” also won a Silver Telly. Zainab, an OSCAR undergraduate researcher who was also featured in the "The Mason Impact” video, discusses how her experiences in her native Pakistan drive her research into better antibiotics. It was produced by the same team as “The Mason Impact” video.

Another video in the Mason Research series, “Prosthetics Research,” won a Bronze Telly. This video focuses on the work being done by Mason bioengineering professor Siddhartha Sikdar and his team at the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions to improve the function and quality of life of individuals with physical and psychosocial disabilities. Kurec worked on this video with Gloriana Wills.

“The Education Leadership Program,” a student recruitment video for the graduate program in the College of Education and Human Development, also won a Bronze Telly. The team on this project was Wills, Andy Riddle and Jessica Riddle.

“At its core, video is a storytelling medium and because of its ability to engage with an audience, video allows us to effectively communicate the implications of a Mason researcher's work well beyond the world of academia,” said Wood. “It also allows our team at GMU-TV to flex their creativity muscles while getting unfettered access to some of Mason’s greatest minds.”

Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards honors video and television made for all screens and is judged by the Telly Award Judging Council; a group of leading video and television experts from some of the most prestigious companies in entertainment, publishing, advertising, and emerging technology.

Horror films bring a global perspective

Colleen Rich — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000

Horror films bring a global perspective Colleen Rich Mon, 10/28/2019 - 05:00

October is the month when most people indulge in their favorite scary movies, but for some students at George Mason University, horror is their homework.

FAVS 300 Global Horror Film is a three-credit course that explores the horror film genre with an international lens, and looks at the social and political contexts behind the creation of the films. The class fulfills the Global Understanding requirement in the Mason Core so it attracts students from all majors. Film and video studies (FAVS) majors have the option to do a creative final project and make a video instead of writing a final paper.

Photo © Getty Images

The course covers topics from vampires, zombies, slasher movies, and aliens to horror parody and Alfred Hitchcock. Whole weeks are devoted to Japanese, Korean, Iranian, and Latin American horror. Recent screenings for the class have featured Tomas Alfredsson’s “Let the Right One In” and Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession” mixed in with clips from George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” and Brian de Palma’s “Carrie,” depending on the discussion topic that week.

The class is not for the faint of heart—there is a lot of film theory.

This semester there are two sections taught by FAVS adjunct faculty members and filmmakers Samirah Alkassim and Maillim “May” Santiago.

This is Santiago’s second semester teaching the course. She said she enjoys exposing students to films they wouldn’t ordinarily encounter.

“I try and bring in a lot of underappreciated, horror-specific films,” said Santiago, who also does a horror film podcast, Horrorspiria. “It's a really interesting genre to look at through the social lens. I like bringing that globalization angle and having frank discussions about it and how they feel about it.”

Samirah Alkassim

Many students in the classes are already horror fans. Computational and data sciences major Jared McDonough said he has read a lot of horror, but this is his first film class.

“I wanted to try out some parts of the horror genre that I hadn’t been exposed to,” he said.

Film and video studies major Thomas [student prefers to use first name] is one of the students choosing to do a video for his final project. His video is about vampires and will explore LGBT themes.

“During our vampire class, there was a lot of a discussion about hidden lives,” said Thomas. “I plan to explore that aspect in this video.”

The three- to five-minute video isn’t an easy project. Filmmakers have to turn in a film treatment early in the semester and provide a budget and shooting script when the video is completed. The project must reference some aspect of horror covered in class. They also have a screening of the videos at the end of the semester, and the instructors award extra credit to classmates willing to work on the productions.

Maillim "May" Santiago

Alkassim and Santiago are also working on book on the same topic with Ziad Foty of Catholic University, who has taught Mason’s Global Horror Film class in the past. The book is an edited anthology incorporating many of the readings the instructors already use along with some original essays.

“We all feel like there are some gaps in the scholarship about horror cinema, gaps really specific to areas in the world,” said Alkassim, who writes about Arab cinema. “And that is not because there are no horror films in those areas, but because most of the scholarship is Western based.”

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts Film and Video Studies

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Mason student film wins regional Emmy

Melanie Balog — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:36:49 +0000

Mason student film wins regional Emmy Melanie Balog Mon, 06/27/2016 - 11:36

Jason Gilligan didn’t have winning an Emmy on his bucket list. In fact, the George Mason University film and video studies major has hardly had time to make a bucket list.

A short while ago, he was majoring in psychology at Christopher Newport University. Now his short film, “Through the Trees’ Eyes,” and the team that produced it, has won a student production award from National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter. George Mason also was recognized with a Pillar of Excellence at the same ceremony on June 25.

The short film is actually a pilot episode that Gilligan wrote in his FAVS 378 Web Series course. As a part of the class, every student wrote a pilot for a web series they were pitching. The scripts were then read by outside reviewers who recommended which pilots should be produced. Gilligan’s script was one of two chosen. The class was then divided into two groups to crew the films.

Hannah Looney served as producer of “Through the Trees’ Eyes,” Cameron Perrier directed, Logan McKennah Brown was director of photography and Austin Crooch edited the film. All are film and video studies majors.

“I still have trouble believing it,” Gilligan said. “I’m really proud and really amazed.”

This is the third time GMU-TV senior executive producer Susan Kehoe has taught the Web Series course. The second time she taught the class, students won a Telly, a Webby and six Cinema in Industry (CINDY) awards for their work.

“The students are really turning out some amazing work,” Kehoe said. “Awards like this are testament to the outstanding students Mason attracts.”

A horror buff, Gilligan has been writing short stories since middle school, but this was his first serious attempt at screenwriting. In “Through the Trees’ Eyes,” a combat veteran travels through a forest patrolled by a mysterious man who promises to protect him from the packs of feral Night Terrors.

Gilligan said the biggest challenge of writing this pilot was figuring out what the entire series would be.

“To have the audience explore the mystery fully, I had to know what is in the first and last episodes,” he said.