The Department of Media Studies and Production (MSP) is introducing a Master of Arts Project Workshop to help graduate students develop their final master of arts creative projects.
Graduate students entering their final semester of courses often construct projects combining theory and practice. The practice portion consists of an artistic production that can be rendered in various forms, including narrative videos, documentaries, websites and music albums. A research paper is also required to contextualize the students’ work.
“Since so many of our students do these projects for their master’s degrees, we decided that this seemed like a perfect opportunity to create a more robust learning experience for those students,” said Jan Fernback, director of the master’s program in the department. “They can benefit from the expertise of our faculty while also learning from their fellow students in a collaborative atmosphere.”
Recently, faculty members in the program have noticed that students produce stronger projects when they have a healthy head start.
“This meant that the final project and papers were not as polished as they could be, and while acceptable for meeting the program requirements we knew that if they started the pre-planning stages earlier they could be much stronger,” said Assistant Professor Adrienne Shaw.
James Leyden, KLN ’18, is creating a computer programming system that will allow smaller musical acts to use light projection shows to correspond with their music during live performances. He spends about 30 hours a week live coding for his project.
The final project offers hands-on experience to students and adds work to their portfolios.
“I think that's a true strength in the program—people get to create the work that they truly want to make; they design it and they create it,” said Assistant Professor of Instruction Laura Zaylea.
Jinsuk Kim, KLN ’18, is producing a short film which is a personal narrative of his journey from South Korea to the United States. “Jin,” in which he serves as producer, director and actor, consists of three chapters starting with a simulation of his life in his home country and follows him as he learns English and adjusts to American culture.
“When I started this school I thought about making a short film about my story,” said Kim. “My real story might be interesting to Koreans because so many people are interested in living in America and there’s not [much] information, so if I share my story there [will] be informative footage.”
Kim began working on his final project during the summer, allowing him to construct a larger product. His crew consisted of 100 of his fellow MSP classmates. The project required hours of hard work: scouting for locations, achieving the right angles and, now, editing.
Various Bible verses are featured between each chapter. The film also deals with issues such as racism, inequality and assimilation.
“I wanted to make this project because I want more Americans to understand foreigners,” said Kim. “Also I want foreigners to feel comforted, like they might be feeling lonely and struggling with their culture and language and if they watch the film they may [think], ‘Ah, I’m not the only one struggling with these issues.’”
Kim’s final project will be his first under his production company J’s Pic✝ures.
The course, MSP 5547, will meet on Wednesdays from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m. beginning this fall.