The bright soundstage lights go off. One lighting unit shines through a window at a human subject sitting at a desk inside of a set that looks like an office. An orange gel covers a second light to warm up the tone of the scene. A third incandescent source on the desk is dimmed. A white bounce board is strategically placed to direct light. At last, there is a certain mood in the room – one created by careful manipulation of light. With a few more nuanced adjustments, Channing Lowe’s lesson for beginning film production students about lighting a scene is at its apex.
The back and forth between students and professor during this process is muffled behind masks, which are required these days during a global pandemic to pull off in-person labs at Salt Lake Community College throughout the summer at different SLCC campuses.
At its Westpointe Campus, SLCC welding and truck driving students don masks and plastic shields as they receive close-up instruction. At SLCC’s Jordan Campus, nursing and biotech labs cater to one or two masked students at a time to ensure proper social distancing. At the Taylorsville Campus, wipes and hand sanitizer are at the ready for students clad in workout clothes in Nathan Thomas’ exercise science lab. Inside a large room for a law enforcement class on the college’s Miller Campus, soft mats are wiped down after masked students are finished practicing defensive tactic moves on each other.
Inside the soundstage set within SLCC’s Center for Arts and Media on its South City Campus, Ekaterina Vergara works on making her dream come true. She is a big fan of film production in South Korea and wants to work in the industry there someday. “I really like the way people make movies and how they make people feel and learn,” says 19-year-old Ekaterina. “I just want to be part of that world and make impossible things possible.”
Zenock Walker’s dream is to be a game designer, maybe someday own his own studio. “I have always been in love with games since I was a kid,” says Zenock, 22. “I would make up games with my action figures and pretend I was in a video game.”
Both say they’re jumping into their education during a pandemic because they don’t want to put off getting started on their dreams. They report feeling safe in Channing’s class, some of which is delivered remotely out of necessity, which presents the challenge of upholding quality of education. “I don’t think I’ve overcome it,” he says of the challenge. “It’s just something I’m dealing with. It does diminish, whether you like it or not. I think face-to-face is much better. Everyone is there, communicating with each other. You can’t match that doing remote. It’s acceptable, but in my opinion, you can’t beat face-to-face. Right now, we’re dealing with it and doing the best we can, trying to give people the best education we can for the situation we’re in.”
Channing peers into his laptop computer to check in with a student observing the day’s lab using Microsoft Teams software at home. The energetic instructor constantly adjusts his mask throughout the lesson, talking students through every step of the lighting process as he bounds around the soundstage pointing out locations of needed equipment.
Zenock drinks it all in. “I hope to learn as much as I can about how to express myself creatively,” he says. “Video games are heavily inspired by film, especially how film tells a story in a visual way – video games are very similar to that.”
Ekaterina acutely understands early in her education that making films is about much more than just turning on a camera and pointing it at something. “I have found that everything matters in film,” she says. “The positions, the lighting, if you combine all of those well, you can really connect to people’s emotions – so, that’s what I want to achieve. I really want to connect to an audience and know how to express myself the way I really want to.”
And in somewhat of a surprise addition to this group of young students, Lon Schiffbauer, a Business Management assistant professor at SLCC and known for his instructional videos on YouTube, easily transitions from a doctorate-educated teacher to fledgling film student. His goal: to improve his own videos. “It’s kind of like pulling a thread on a sweater – once you start, you can’t stop,” says Lon, who has used YouTube also to learn how to shoot videos. “I started to realize I’m only going to learn so much with YouTube videos. So, I decided, wouldn’t it be cool if I could take a class on film production and take the principles I learn in class and apply them to the videos I make for my students.”
Throughout this summer, the lights have been on at South City Campus – and at SLCC’s Westpointe, Miller, Taylorsville and Jordan campuses, connecting students (and professors) with an education that matters right now if they’re going to get started (or improve) on careers – and dreams – sooner than later.
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