Welcome to a 13-part special series for Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and

video students, faculty, and alumni about the film and video major.

Ariel, you are working in documentaries, is that right?

Yeah.

Well, I had a class.

I had documentary one last semester and, uh, it was honestly

a really, really great experience.

My main interest was fiction filmmaking and I kind of wanted to expand,

so I took documentary and there's honestly nothing like documentary.

It's very real.

It's very grounded.

So it ended up being one of my favorite experiences in the actual film major.

So what it, what it is, you pretty much, you get a camera, you get a crew and you

have to, you get to tell real stories about real people, and something about

that is just so humbling and so grounding.

And you get to really project these voices that may not be heard and to kind of shed

light on many issues and just a variety of topics that are just fun to explore.

You get to interview people and it's different than fiction, but it's a,

it's very, it's a good experience.

Yeah.

And, and I think, you know, even though they are different in terms of how you

produce them, that heart of storytelling is still there that Julie was talking

about a little while ago is, you know, you're looking for that emotion.

What did you experience?

Jordan, you came and visited me a little bit, uh, at the WGVU local PBS station.

Can you tell me maybe what you learned there, not to put you on the

spot, but I'll put you on the spot.

I mean, I was in the same doc class as Ariel actually.

And so I, I already kind of liked doc and everything, but that was

my first experience with kind of real life documentary filmmaking

outside of classes and school.

And that was just so cool because at WGVU, you kind of work in this small crew and

that's really what I'm interested in is not being on like these large, large sets,

but just a small crew and really, you know, you're just going where the action

is, and I just think it's, documentary is just so cool because you get to tell all

these different stories, and stories that on paper might not sound that interesting.

Like I think at the time you were working on the stuff with drums, and

there was this band and stuff and like, well, on paper, it doesn't necessarily

sound-- Okay, people are playing drums, people are in a band, whatever.

But then when you tell that story, it just kind of comes to life.

Right.

Yeah.

It's finding those little moments of action and making sure that whatever

you felt while you were on set is, comes through when you're watching

it back, right, and watching it with an audience, you know, trying to

get that audience to feel whether it was excitement or sadness or anger.

All of those skills that, that we learned at Grand Valley and, and using our tools

of filmmaking to, to make it come through.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Alumni Live: The Podcast special

series about the film and video major.

Be sure to listen to the next episode in the series and subscribe to our

podcast to hear even more from our alumni as they talk about their work

in different parts of the industry.

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Let us know what topics you want to hear our alumni talk about.

The Grand Valley State University Film and Video Alumni Network is here for you.

And we're glad that you're here.

Thank you for listening.