American University School of Communication (SOC) Professor Bill Gentile (that’s me with the black shirt) and School of International Service (SIS) Professor Simon Nicholson (far right) review material generated by students Lauren Demko and Jon Malis at a park on the main street of San Cristobal at nearly midnight. Photo by Esther Gentile.
Below, American University students work on their film as a sea lion sleeps in the foreground at San Cristobal island in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Above, Danny Ledonne films giant turtles on Santa Cruz island as teammate Suzanne Taylor looks on.
I’ve been deeply impressed by the students’ tenacity in going after these stories. With very few exceptions, they’ve been relentless about pursuing the material they need to put their projects together. Two members of one group have gotten up every morning to shoot time-lapsed clips of the sunrise – and they’ve waited out every sunset […]
It occurs to me, particularly after much talk about the subject and my most recent blog, that a definition of “backpack journalism” may be in order. So, backpack journalism is the craft of one properly trained professional using a hand-held digital camera to tell stories in a more immediate, more intimate fashion than is achievable […]
It’s not exactly backpack journalism. But our students are learning how to tell stories on the run with hand-held digital cameras, which is a key component of backpack journalism. The 24 students are broken down into four groups of six. The film making responsibilities are distributed among them. The kind of material they’re looking for […]
These American University students are working on a series of documentaries about alternative power sources in the Galapagos. Here, on San Cristobal, they shoot one segment about wind power.