Randy Strobl: Welcome to a special two-part series for Alumni Live:

The Podcast about the history of the film and video major at

Grand Valley State University.

If you want to see a video of this episode complete with the

archive photos and videos look for the link in the description.

In part one, we'll meet our guests and learn about the early years of

the Arts and Media major at William James College, which was part

of Grand Valley State Colleges.

In Part 2, we'll talk about the transformation from Arts and Media to

the Film and Video Production major at Grand Valley State University's School

of Communications, and eventually the Department of Visual and Media Arts.

We'll also hear about the Summer Film Project, the Lip Dub and group

experiences like bonding over late night edits or 12 hour film shoots Join us as

alumni Tim Sundt introduces our guests.

Tim Sundt: Welcome to another session of Alumni Live.

It's a continuing opportunity to bring the Grand Valley film

and video community together.

We've put together a really nice group of folks today.

I'm Tim Sundt.

I actually attended William James College.

Graduated in 1982.

So I came where video was really starting to come in.

I really was involved more in video and, television production.

So I actually came there because, I lived in the east side of Michigan, not that

far away, but never heard of the college.

Got a mailing saying, We'll give you 500 bucks a year, which back

then was a significant amount.

When you consider, $33 a credit hour back in the day.

So I looked at it, looked at the catalog and said, Hey, they actually

have something I wanna go into.

Came out, looked at the college and started in the fall.

So I'd like to have everybody introduce themselves, and tell us who you are.

tell us when you were involved, if you're still involved with

Grand Valley or not, and, how you got connected to the college.

What was it that brought you there, or who was it that brought you there?

Gregg McNeil: Hi, my name's Greg McNeil.

I graduated around 1996, I think, in December of 1996.

And, I came into the program from another school.

I was going to Ohio University at the time and ran outta money and,

uh, was looking for another school.

And my grandmother ran into an article that she read about Julian

Boyance who had interned on a Spike Lee movie and she told me, "Oh, you

should check out Grand Valley State".

And so on my break I came up to visit her and toured Grand Valley,

and that's how I got involved.

So I came in mid-year to, the film program.

Girbe Eefsting: My name is Girbe Eefsting.

I was a student at William James.

Actually started at Thomas Jefferson and then transferred to William James.

I heard about Grand Valley's experiment with alternative education within

the Grand Rapids Peace community.

I was quite a activist, draft resistor, anti-war activist.

And, within that, group of people, we, we heard about Grand Valley

State Colleges, which was the concept called the Cluster Colleges.

And part of that cluster was, Thomas Jefferson College and, William

James College and Thomas Jefferson offered a bachelor's in philosophy.

And, William James was a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science.

And I think what attracted me to, transfer to William James was the Arts

and Media major, and we're talking 1972, where we had experienced the

second coming of television, cable TV was one technological change.

And then, uh, they developed the Sony Porta Pack portable half inch

black and white recording capability.

And it became an important part of social change to make media that,

helped facilitate social change.

So that was really, What, got me involved in James and an

incredible journey, a perfect storm.

The people that were there, the whole thing.

I could go on for days, , and it's, it's, it's informed my life.

And then I also had the opportunity as an Adjunct back in the nineties,

in the 16 millimeter film program.

So we'll talk more about that later.

I think.

Stephanie Choriatis: Hi everyone.

I am Stephanie Choriatis.

I graduated in 2013.

I first heard of the Grand Valley Film Program through a friend of mine

who was actually a freshman and just getting, accepted into the program.

And I had been at that point a high schooler dabbling into, you know, low

budget YouTube videos and very much, aware that I wanted to pursue film.

And he was talking to me and said, Hey, it's a, it's a great program.

I love it so far.

And I went on one campus tour and loved it.

And at that point I just, I, I fell in love with the program.

I was there for four years and, I get a little emotional thinking about,

but it was certainly, it was some of the best four years of my life.

So I, I owe a lot to Grand Valley and, and look back fondly on my time there.

John Philbin: Hi, I'm John Philbin , I didn't go to Grand Valley, but

I taught there for 23 years.

Just retired, in December.

How I got connected, I saw an ad for a Professor of film and, I flew up on an icy

January day where they had to hose down the wings of the plane to de-ice them.

And, landed and saw the campus.

Met Tony Perrine who you are gonna see here in a moment, who picked me up at

the airport and, the rest is history.

Toni Perrine: Hi, my name is Tony Perrine and like my brother John there.

I'm a former faculty member.

I started in 1989 and retired just , this past December.

And, , it's kind of the way you get an academic job.

You see the, the job posting you apply.

It's a pretty rigorous process.

One of the women who hired me called it a stamina test.

Deanna Morse and Barb Roos are the two women who were instrumental in hiring me.

And yeah, it was ideal position for me because it was in Michigan,

which is my home state, and I was happy to return here.

And, it replicated a lot of things that I appreciated most in

my film education, which again, we'll be talking more about later.

But, it was a great 30 years,

Tim Sundt: What was it that you found unique about the school, both

when you began there, what brought you there and as you spent more time

with the classes, the school, the students, the faculty, Girbe I'll

start with you cause you're of my era

Girbe Eefsting: Yes.

A little bit before.

So this is 1972 to 1976 is, you know, my time And just to put that in context, it

was a period of great social change, as I mentioned earlier about, uh, anti-war.

So I actually graduated high school in 1968 and I was successfully

able to resist the draft.

for four years, through a lot of, you know, education and

understanding and support.

When I started James, it was four years after high school.

And so my contemporaries who had been drafted, who had joined and who had

come back from Vietnam were the people that I kind of hung with at James.

And these were the most active anti-war people on campus, were the veterans.

And because I was the same age, I was attracted, that community.

So there was a lot of, social, activity in terms of, ending the

war that really, colored my first two, three years of being at James.

We made films around that issue.

We traveled to Washington, DC on a couple occasions.

Nixon was inaugurated in 1973, and the people, the community of filmmakers from

Grand Valley, we went, we documented this, we came back and did a presentation

to different local high schools, a multimedia show, about the war.

The other part that really is important, I think historically, as I mentioned

earlier, cable television was coming to the country and actually the whole country

got involved in this talk of what does it mean that we go from three channels to 500

channels in some community, And it became a First Amendment issue, Freedom of speech

that people should have access to this.

And so what got invented, and this was a national conversation, Congress

was involved the 1976 Cable Act, a student group and a citizen group, who

were educated about the importance of cable to a democracy, to people having

access got together and we educated and lobbied the Grand Rapid City Commission.

Cable companies would come and negotiate with the city cuz they

needed to use the right of ways.

And anyway, this established a really good model in Grand Rapids for Public

Access TV and it's still going on today.

And I'm very proud of that.

I'm proud of the fact that, uh, my education had to do

with social involvement.

It wasn't this sort of ivory tower kind of thing.

It was really involved in the community.

And at that time there was so many other areas, environmental

studies , urban planning.

Those were all things going on at James at the time.

It was really at the forefront of all the sort of revolutions and

alternatives that were happening.

It was really exciting.

And then from there, I just got into, there was also a film

program and it was called 16 Millimeter 1 and 16 Millimeter 2.

And 16 millimeter One was learning how to use Bolex and shoot film,

expose film and actually edit film.

And then 16 millimeter 2, it upped a little bit to doing, what we

call double system and, sound.

And it became a little more sophisticated.

And, and it was out of that program that the, the Grand Valley also William

James developed a , study abroad program, and I got to go for a semester

and study at the Italian Institute of Cinematography in Rome for I, I

was there for almost eight months.

Uh, 12 of us went and it was the pilot program.

The Grand Valley paid for the entire amount, it was an amazing,

experience to go and that's really where I kind of made my career as a

filmmaker, director of photography.

And upon graduation, that's how I, you know, made my living

for the next, uh, 30 years.

And I, I still work in the media.

Tim Sundt: I'd like to jump to a faculty perspective.

So I'll start with Tony, what was it you found that was unique about

the school and about the program when you came to Grand Valley?

Toni Perrine: Yeah, so my experience at other schools was actually as a

student, Grand Valley was my first and only full-time teaching job.

So when I came here to teach, I was a total newbie.

But, I, did my master's degree at the University of Michigan and

my PhD at Northwestern University.

And what was important to both of those programs that I attended previously

to coming to Grand Valley was the idea of combining theory and practice.

So we were both learning how to use the tools.

and you know, that's an important part of it, especially back in

the way we were film, production because it's a pretty exacting craft.

But, that the theoretical perspectives, the history, the critical studies part is

an important part of what, students need.

And it kind of connects to what Girbe was talking about in terms of understanding

the importance and significance of media and film, that you're doing something

significant with whatever mode that you choose to work in and that hopefully you

understand the power of the medium and, and use it to create significant work.

And I would say that was one of the through lines for,

William James to the School of Communications because William James.

The motto, which all the students see when they're in Lake Superior Hall is,

"No impression without expression."

In other words, you don't really retain what you're learning unless

you're doing something with it.

And hopefully doing something significant with it.

So William James idea was carried through into the School of C

ommunications when it formed in 1984.

And in fact, a lot of the faculty who taught in William James were the ones

who created the School of Communications.

And that idea of theory and practice kind of evolved into integrating

liberal and professional education.

So that was kind of what the School of Communication was all about.

And so that kind of theory and practice doing it and also analyzing it,

criticizing it, learning the history, understanding the social context, being

aware of the power of these powerful media, , so that that was all part

of what carried through the different iterations if, if you will, of film

and video production at Grand Valley.

And, I mostly did the film studies part, but when I started, what was really cool

about it was I got to teach just about everything in the curriculum, before

we became bigger and more specialized.

So that was really fun as a teacher to, to both teach film

studies and film production, which you don't have the opportunity

to do at a lot of other places.

Tim Sundt: We'll get back to a couple of students yet, but I might as

well stay in this tack with John.

Tell me about what is it you found when you came to Grand Valley that was unique?

What was different for you?

John Philbin: I was an adjunct at Columbia College Chicago, and then I went

to Southern Illinois, Carbondale, got my

MFA there, and I was, became a lecturer there before I came up to Grand Valley.

But going off of what Tony said, I remember the School of Com thinking

that was very unique, because in Southern Illinois and at Columbia

College, it was very much the film program was off on its own, which is

fine, but it was very much like a little silo that, that did its own thing.

And, and the School of Communications blended film and video production

with television broadcasting, with journalism, com studies and so on.

And I thought that was actually very interesting, partly because, I did a

little journalism when I was in school working for the school newspaper,

and I did television and I did, you know, regular motion pictures.

And so I like the idea that they were all blended together.

Randy Strobl: We're taking a short break to tell you about the Chuck

Peterson Memorial Fellowship.

The fellowship was established by Chuck Peterson's family and friends to assist

the upper level students in the film and video program at gvsu, who are working

on creative projects that support the nonprofit sector in their community.

Kyle Macciome, May the 2020 recipient of that fellowship describes the

benefits of the support he received.

Kyle Macciome: When going through this fellowship, there are three separate

parts of yourself that I think get to experience a lot of development.

The first is as a student, because this is a learning process.

You get to learn how to work with a client on your own independently,

out in the world, away from the classroom, like you would in

something like producing for clients.

And the second one would be as a video maker, as a video producer, as someone

who has respect for the work that they're doing and wants to improve on

themselves and produce a final product that can be used out in the real world.

And then the third one would be as a citizen.

You know, you're not making video for an entertainment value or for some

kind of commercial purpose, it's for a non-profit it's for a direct benefit

in your community and being a citizen of that community, understanding how

you can directly impact and improve it, is a really valuable experience that

I think the fellowship teaches you to be as, as a student, as a filmmaker

and as a citizen, all three of those things are directly a part of this

process that you get to learn and ask yourself, how do I want to be seen?

And how do I want to act as these three roles?

Randy Strobl: For more information and to donate to the scholarship, visit the link

in the description now back to the show.

Tim Sundt: Now Stephanie, you're the most recent grad, so

let's jump up to, to your era.

What was it that, really stuck out?

What made it unique for you?

Stephanie Choriatis: Yeah, I was, I've been thinking about this

question a lot and for me, the faculty is what make it so unique.

The relationships that I was able to develop and connect with

the faculty, those are lifelong.

I am still going to my advisor, for life advice and, continue

to have that relationship today.

I remember when I, I think I was a sophomore, so it's my second year in

the program and just chit chatting with Kim Roberts and, I said, Kim,

do you have any children, ? And she goes, I don't have kids.

I don't have time.

I have all of you guys.

And I was like, Oh, yes, that's, You are our mother . So I think back to that and

how that kind of, um, Really impacted me and made my time more meaningful.

I mean, I can even think back to working with John.

Working with Tony and having moments of just total film school meltdowns

as you do when you're in film school and having them be there for me was

something that I don't think I would've been able to get anywhere else.

And like I said, my connection with the faculty has maintained,

since I graduated almost eight years ago, nine years ago now.

uh, It's something that I think very unique to the program.

I know that I haven't had that experience anywhere elsewhere

and, I, I'm so thankful for it.

Tim Sundt: I'm gonna finish up with Greg.

What was about Grand Valley that really stuck out to you or continues to?

Gregg McNeil: What really stood out to me was just how self-directed

we were all expected to be.

And the School of Com itself was very much on its own, just doing its own thing.

And as students, we were expected to be that kind of,

, self-directed force of nature.

You know, we were given remits and we went on and did our thing, and that came

down to everything, you know, all the technology at the School of Comm was open

to us and it was there for our taking.

And when I first got there, I asked, what, what, what's that device

in the back of the room there?

Oh, that's the optical printer.

I'm like, Oh, how do you, how do you use that?

Well, here's the manual.

Figure it out.

And we were given all of this, all of these toys and this huge

sandbox, and we were just told to go forth and, and do our thing.

And I think that's what really, really helped me in my later pursuits,

because I knew that I had within me the the power and the confidence to

go forth and do whatever I needed to do without asking permission or

looking for approval necessarily.

And I think that's what made my experience at Grand Valley unique.

We were very much on our own and within our group, within our own

filmmaker group, we got very close and we were kind of doing our own

thing and it was pretty fantastic.

Tim Sundt: And Tony, you had a thought that you wanted to add in here?

Toni Perrine: Yeah, I wanted to follow up on something that

Stephanie said actually, which is about the faculty in the program.

Of course we've had fabulous students and that goes without saying.

Hopefully it speaks for itself.

But we have also benefited from a lot of talented, dedicated, and hardworking

teachers who haven't, always been as supported as they might have been by

the University in terms of resources.

So we've actually done a lot with limited resources over time.

But we've been supported and energized by a lot of visiting faculty

members, a lot of adjuncts, a number of whom have actually been alums.

I think it's a wonderful way that so many people have given back to

our program and to our university.

And I just wanted to mention a few names Girbe here, of course.

Suzanne, who's in the background there, o ne of the producers of the show, Melissa

Bowman, Pete Porter, Maggie Annerino, Gretchen Vinnedge, Kerri Vanderhoff,

Joel Potrykus, Spencer Everhart, Ryan Copping, Sarah Vesely-Nawrocki,

There are others that I've missed who are adjuncts.

And these are all people who went through the program and then dedicated

their talents keeping it strong.

So that's, I just wanted to put in that word of appreciation for all

those people who really energized the program over the years.

Tim Sundt: Now one other name of course, that's in there is, is Barb

Roos we have a clip we, me looking at pretty quick coming up here.

Barb taught for, I'm not sure how many years she was there when I was

Toni Perrine: Thirty five years 35.

Girbe Eefsting: I think I was, uh, I'm counting 40.

40.

Tim Sundt: Ok.

Now she,

Toni Perrine: Oh, so she was there before.

She was like, officially.

Girbe Eefsting: She was adjuncting when I was there.

It's between 72 and I think it was in 77 that, they offered

her a full-time position.

Toni Perrine: So 77.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Sundt: Well I, I came there in 78.

She was my advisor and just seemed like she had been there,

probably had been since, you know, almost the beginning of it.

So was a tremendous force and I think that force is still, felt through all

the students and staff who were in faculty were there because she was there for

such a long time, had a great impact.

She did a, , documentary about WJC and we're gonna see a clip coming up here and

if you wanna see the whole presentation, we're gonna put a link on here as well.

But let's just look at a clip talking about the conversation.

That was William James.

Video Clip - Narrator and Music: --These are not the ivory towers of

a traditional American college, nor are these traditional halls of Ivy.

William James College was founded in 1971 as an alternative college.

Our inspiration, the philosopher William James, the psychologist, the artist

and teacher, William James, he taught us that we learn in order to act.

At James, we tried to merge theory with practice and balance individualism

with a commitment to community.

Video Clip - Deanna Morse: The qualities that I saw in people were sort of

self initiative, willing to follow things through, willing to take risks

willingness to fail, and a desire to really do what it took to get the

job done, which in many times meant a lot of work and a lot of redoing.

Randy Strobl: Now we'll hear an audio clip from alumni Karen Kleinheksel,

who was part of the William James Arts and Media community from 1972 to 1976.

Karen Kleinheksel: I came to Grand Valley State Colleges specifically

to go to William James College from Washington DC in 1972.

I wanted to go into social relations.

However, about halfway through, I took a 15 credit class called Community

Video Workshop, taught by Bob Conro.

I think there were 12 or 15 people in it.

Anyway, it was the most exciting thing to me, and I pursued my

Arts and Media concentration.

Anyway, I have saved a couple of my textbooks.

I thought you'd wanna check out the Spaghetti City Video Manual Signs of

the Times and the Gorilla Television book, which was $3.95 as a textbook.

Not bad.

Tim Sundt: Girbe, tell me what it was that really fit the way the film and video

program fit with that whole philosophy.

Girbe Eefsting: One of the things that I think was really unique about

James is that you sometimes couldn't tell the faculty from the students.

Now, this was also back to the social period because you had returning

warriors, from the Vietnam War.

So they were older.

There was also the Women's Movement

and a lot of women who had been raised in a traditional family culture, decided

that maybe that wasn't gonna fulfill them.

And so there were older women that came back to go to college.

So it was a very diverse community in that sense, from an age standpoint.

And also because of the nature of the times, and so much new stuff is going

on, you know, it's like alternative.

Was this key term alternative everything.

Alternative counterculture also was a term like against the

dominant culture of the time.

So faculty would sometimes and many times teach courses that they

weren't necessarily had majored in or were, you know, trained

in because they were interested.

One of my important teachers there was Bob Conro, who was, an, English PhD, a writer

written books and, and he was fascinated by the, the, the video movement.

And so he, he taught courses but didn't know the first thing about making videos.

And, and that was sort of this sense of we were all on this journey together that

what's, that's what made it so exciting and, the life experience of, people.

And I think the other thing that for me was so powerful was,

William James felt like a matriarchy.

It was the women that were running the college.

Adrian Tinsley was the dean.

There was an assistant dean, Rhonda Rivera, who was an attorney.

And then Barbara, of course, and Tony.

And Deanna.

, it was what the, what the women's movement could really say.

You know, let the women run things and see how they do.

And it was an incredible, experience for me.

And, this idea that faculty and students you couldn't tell apart.

I think that's what kinda led me and Barbara to become partners and friends.

We, we collaborated in film and, you know, then we collaborated in having a family

together we were filmmakers together at always different levels of experience.

And that's the beauty of film.

It's a, it's a tribal experience is what I, I think of.

Randy Strobl: The documentary about William James College illustrates

a core principle of the school.

Video Clip - Narrator and Music: Central to the idea of the college

was the integration of theory and practice and insistence that what

we learned be useful in the world.

Tim Sundt: Part of the dynamic back then too was that you had on campus

both a radio station and TV station.

So a lot of the people who were in the program back in those days and

the, you seventies, eighties, either were then trying out things at WGVU.

I worked there for three and a half years doing, a lot of it was doing

sports, it's doing production, learning to work with a team.

It has a great way to learn.

So when you got out in the work world, you had that work experience.

Also saw some very experimental stuff going on.

Walter Wright was a professor there who had come to the studio at night

with some of the students and just try, some very different, video

projects they were working on.

And also the, the radio station on campus.

SRX Student Run Experimental.

And it was experimental, it was student run.

They tried a lot of different things.

There were dramas, there were daily programs.

but those two areas gave a lot of students a way to then use the energy

and some of the ideas they had both in video or on radio to experiment,

have fun with things, learn.

And it was a great part of that dynamic.

Randy Strobl: 1977 Alumni, Jeffrey Miller talks about the early technology

available for studio productions.

Jeffrey Miller: We had a small studio.

In the basement of Manitou Hall and we did an old black and white studio.

We had two blunder tongue, video cameras, television cameras on

heads, studio heads and heads.

And our headsets were like those kind you see in the old movies, you know, the

old operators had, you know, and, we had what we called a Ka-chunk switcher.

So when the director said, you know, Ready one, take one, , you hear this ka-chunk

, we call it the Ka-chunk switcher, but it was in the basement of Manitou.

And most all of us ended up working up at WGVC.

I was one of the announcers who did all the voiceovers and the, , IDs and so on.

We had a lot of fun doing that.

We worked in master control production, control studio cameras and so on.

It was great training for us all to get our hands on and stuff.

And so concentration was a great, uh, great program.

Toni Perrine: I started after William James, but, a lot of my

colleagues, again, were part of it and I felt kind of, envious.

Like I had missed something that was really cool.

And I think you get that from listening to Girbe and Tim talk about the experience.

It was a much smaller place, It was very experimental.

It was, you know, literally an experimental college.

And insofar as it was the, the laid the groundwork for the School of

Communications that, you know, some of that aspect did carry through, but

the School of Communications became a much larger entity, had eight different

majors and a grad program, and went from

I think 12 faculty when I started teaching there to 30, by the time it,

was reorganized a couple of years ago when film and video and photography

were added to the, art and design major.

So we became a new entity, Visual and Media Arts.

But the School of Communications, and the university in general became a

much larger, and I guess I would also have to say more conventional place.

So that's one thing that was perhaps lost with growth and with

success and it was, you know, a changing cultural context as well.

But the things that we held onto, I think were, were part of what

makes the film video program unique.

Randy Strobl: Thank you for joining us for the special two part series

of Alumni Live, the podcast about the history of the film and video major.

Be sure to listen to the next episode in the series where we'll talk about

the Summer Film Project, the Lip Dub, the experience of bonding over

late night group projects and more.

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

work in different parts of the industry.

Check out Alumni Live on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for more convers.

Let us know what topics you wanna 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 too.