Inaugural MACS Student Showcase to celebrate student media production projects

Update 5/10/2023: The MACS Student Showcase program is now available to watch online:

View Program, Credits, and Timestamps 

MACS 150: Intro to Digital Media Production 
00:00:18 - Alma (Ethan Hill, Kara Yoo, and Ben Shlau)
00:04:33 - The Radio Doctor (Eleni Sakas, Caroline Tadla, Roderick Carbins, and Juliana Chang)
00:11:25 - The Indelible Goodbye (Andrew Stover, Ryan Pasterz, and Raegan Gooding)
00:16:07 - Strawberry (Paul Duarte-Noe, Jiyayi Jing, Yuhan Zhou, and Nick Chan)
00:20:33 - Drink of Fate (Gavin Schroeder, Joey Chan, and Emily Kunst)
00:24:23 - Specter’s Market (Jasper Chang, Miles Gregory, Amy Bradu, and Sierra McKeiver) 

MACS 199: Documentary and Social Change 
00:29:21 - One Big Midwestern University: “Anti-Transgender Hate Speech” (Ryan Boyd-Sharpe) 

MACS 205: Introduction to Documentary 
00:44:47 - Romanian Communist Propaganda - A Personal and Archival Perspective (Francesca Dumitrescu) 

MACS 260: Film Production 
00:55:43 - Ready Set Action (Mike Besler)
01:04:53 - The Bookkeeper (Mara Smith and Mark Magallanes)
01:13:05 - The Sharpie, the Sheet, and the Sapphic (Michelle Wang)
01:20:12 - Crumbs of Deception (Max Szykowny and Akkhiel Nambbiar)
01:26:34 - Still Damp (Jake Vanoss)  

MACS 284: Animated Media from Mickey to GIFs 
01:56:31 - How to Make a Song Out of Clay (Matt Fanelli)
01:58:27 - Fossils (Sam Fisher) 

MACS 485: Making Video Essays 
02:01:23 - Howl’s Moving Castle Moving (Nancy Jia)
02:05:21 - [Un]Framing Movement: [Non]Action Cinema of King Hu (Tingyu Chen) 

MACS 370: Cinematography and Sound 
02:08:49 - Time to Remember…Time to Forget (Cameron Taylor and Samarth Taneja)
02:19:08 - Life is No Picnic (Michelle Husain) 

MACS 480: Advanced Filmmaking 
02:31:49 - St. Anthony’s Fire (Michelle Husain, Mark Magallanes, Mara Smith, and Cameron Taylor) 

The Department of Media & Cinema Studies presents the inaugural MACS Student Showcase, featuring faculty-curated work created by students in MACS classes throughout the academic year. 

The event, which celebrates student media production, will be held on Saturday, May 6, at 7 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium of Spurlock Museum. The showcase will screen more than a dozen film projects and a podcast excerpt representing eight different MACS courses, all produced by both individual and groups of students. 

Derek Long, assistant professor of media and cinema studies, said the idea for the event originated from faculty discussions about the “sheer amount of excellent student work” coming out of the program.

“MACS faculty wanted to celebrate all the amazing experiential work that our students are doing in our program,” Long said. “As faculty, we wanted to put on an event showing off our students’ impressive work to a bigger audience than just their instructor and class.” 

The showcase is also an opportunity to share the world premiere of the MACS 480: Advanced Filmmaking short St. Anthony’s Fire. Advanced Filmmaking, taught by Victor Font, lecturer of media and cinema studies, is one of the capstone production courses where students work as a production team for an entire semester to produce a professional 27-minute short film.  

“As you can imagine, the students who have been working on St. Anthony’s Fire for months and months are very excited about being able to share their film with friends, family, and the general public for the first time,” Long said.

Faculty chose the best student-produced work received in their classes from last fall and this spring, aiming to showcase a variety of work, including projects that exemplified excellent technical and aesthetical aspects as well as a compelling subject or theme. Long said they also tried to represent a diverse range of genres, approaches, and student voices. 

“Cutting all the work we receive in an academic year down to a selection of just over two hours was a big challenge,” he said. “There was lots of excellent student work that we just didn’t have time to include.”

Long said they hope to be able to include more podcast and digital media work in future showcases. 

View the trailer for the MACS Student Showcase:

—Kelly Youngblood