Student media
Lights, camera, CADM!
Photo by Lee Ferris
The Last Friday Knight student production team discusses how they work together to shoot, edit, and post their own content on a weekly basis for the Mount community. Left to right: Katie Hogg, Josh Zirkel, Mike Fallanca, and Emily Araujo.
From sports to comedy, Mount students are producing their own original video content on campus under the guidance of Communications, Art, and Digital Media (CADM) faculty advisor Merle Becker, instructor of Digital Media Production.
CADM includes programs like Journalism, Digital Media Production, Visual Communication-Graphic Design, and Technology and Digital Media. In some of these courses, students create video projects.
Outside of the classroom, students can team up to make film projects through Mount Media, a digital production club at the college. Their latest show, Last Friday Knight (LFK), sees the student hosts asking wacky questions to unsuspecting passers-by, to humorous results.
LFK was produced in the Spring 2023 semester by students Katie Hogg, Emily Araujo, Mike Fallanca, and Josh Zirkel. The team created show concepts, shot and edited footage, and managed the show’s social media accounts.
“I love coming up with ideas for episodes and posts,” Hogg explained. “Being able to share it with the Mount community has been awesome.”
Mount Media projects don’t just include comedy shows. For example, the predecessor to LFK was MSPN, produced by Zirkel, which served as a weekly sports wrap-up to showcase accomplishments of MSMC athletes and their teams.
Becker says the most rewarding part of these programs is students getting excited about Digital Media and producing content on their own time: “Filmmaking is in your blood,” she explained. “You love doing it, even if it isn’t for a grade.”
‘Hooked on Comics’
Photos by Lee Ferris
The student art exhibition “Hooked on Comics” is open at Kaplan Family Library and Learning Center through August 25, 2023. The show is free and open to the public.
“Hooked on Comics” features the works of Jack Opiola, who is majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies.
In this series, Opiola explores comic art and design, presenting fresh takes on characters like Spider-Man, Batman’s The Penguin, Star Wars’ Darth Vader, and more.
Creativity takes center stage at Mount’s 2023 CMA Show
Mount students showed off their original works, including film, graphic design, and more, at the annual CMA Show.
Hosted by the Division of Communication, Art, and Digital Media (CADM), the CMA Show returned to the college after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Resurrecting the event became a top priority for Merle Becker, Instructor of Digital Media Production, when she began teaching full time at the college.
“The CMA Show is important, not only for the MSMC community to see what the Digital Media Production program and CADM is up to,” Becker said, “but for the Digital Media Production students to see their work on the big screen in front of an audience. You learn so much about the filmmaking craft by watching your work in a room full of people who are seeing it for the first time.”
Emily Gursky ’23 contributed to this article.
