LIGHT PROJECTS
Documentary,
Art & Community
Locals Learn to Grow & Cook Their Own Food
A web series made in Johnson City, Tennessee
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Featuring Rush Bakshi
Produced in the Media & Communication Department at ETSU
EPISODES
About
Making Media for Our Local Audience
East Tennessee Table is a pedagogical collaboration between students, faculty, and community partners initiated at East Tennessee State University. Media & Communication students were plugged into the project through various entry points including a directing class, documentary class, GA positions, work study positions, and lab positions. This documentary web series was made by local faculty and students, about local characters, and is intended for a local audience.
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The project is informed by the work of Patricia R. Zimmermann and Helen De Michiel (Open Space New Media Documentary : A Toolkit for Theory and Practice, 2018). They write:
In open space new media documentary, this particular idea of community serves as a relational and social construct built into the project and located in a specific place. In these works, community is not idealized, but is instead embodied, political, situated, and social. It is in constant movement through discourse and action. International commercial media worlds monetize documentary, while open space practices strengthen a community’s identity by sharing knowledge and designing collaborative insights and collective engagements with makers, subjects, and viewers. Open space strategies reorient documentary from a film “about” into a commons “for” by building spaces for convenings and exploration (Zimmerman and De Michiel 2017, 106).
​Creating media is media literacy: This experiential, hands-on project showed participants how reality television and non-fiction media have a connection to “the real” that is constructed using various strategies and techniques.
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Questions to consider:
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​Non-fiction forms vary wildly. What are the implications of formal choices on the video and its reception?
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Consider how a news story presents a story versus how a documentary film might present the same event.
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Consider how diverse elements of video production (voice-over, sound effects, motion effects, etcetera) impact how you experience the video. What specific things do you notice?
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​How could you make a show for your community? How would you make your web series/documentary/video differently if you were imagining the specific place where you live?
CREDITS
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Produced & Edited by Shara K. Lange
Featuring Rushmie Bakshi, Nathan Brand, Nate Tadesse & family, Darrius Boyer, Susan Waters, Andy Thewlis, Mary Andreae, ETSU’s Multicultural Center & Rural Resources Students
Music by Lee Bidgood
Sound Mix by Korey Pereira
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Motion Graphics Design by Jake VanHuss
Production crew: Brad Bode, Nick Crockett, Adam Davis, Jared Nesbitt, Brandon Frangipani, Jacob Higgs, Andrew Okai, Shara K. Lange, Hannah Wallace, Troy Green and Logen Hickman
Color Correction by Destinn Reilly-Krapish
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Special thanks to Emily Bidgood, Christine Lanham, Candy Bryant, Tim Altonen, Stacy Whitaker, Nate Tadesse, Rosie McVeigh, Leah Knotts, Rural Resources, Appalachian Research & Development Council (ARC&D), Lotus Farm & Garden Supply & Timber.
Produced with support from the ETSU Provost's Office's Instructional Design Grant in the Radio, TV, Film Program of the Media & Communication Department at East Tennessee State University
2024
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