Dear (video) diary
Students capture life experiences on videotape
Archived article from Dec 1, 2000
By Douglas Frank
A Muslim woman from Pakistan has a conversation with her sisters and a friend about the meaning of marriage in the Pakistani culture.
A young man from Mexico introduces his audience to the process of becoming an American citizen.
A mother, who came from Jamaica, shares her struggles going to school part time and working full time while raising two daughters.
These life experiences exist on videotapes created by students at the Newark campus in an intriguing new course that requires them to look deeply into themselves.
The people behind the cameras were enrolled in last semester's "Video Diaries: Taking Video Personally," now in its second semester. The class is taught by Adrien Royce, a free-lance video documentary producer for almost 20 years, who is also a playwright and former actress.
According to Royce, a visiting lecturer in the department of visual and performing arts, the course aims to create an environment in which the students' "first allegiance is to authenticity" and in which they find inspiration by "mining their own experiences for story ideas and ‘characters.'"
She asks her students to search their lives for critical memories, explore issues they are currently confronting, or touch on significant relationships, well-kept secrets, personal goals, significant milestones and the like.
Most students have their own video camera or have access to video equipment through a friend or family members, says Royce. Last semester, two worked with Rutgers' on-site Hi-8 cameras, creating on- and off-camera narration, as well as videotaping still photographs. Students edit their videos in the Rutgers facility.
"The students have to shoot the video footage themselves, sort of ‘camera stilo,' camera as pen," she explains. "Handing the camera to someone else would be like a diary writer handing the pen to someone else."
The students' diaries range from day-in-the-life portrayals to full life stories, reflecting individual "rhythms, values, humor, passion, sensibilities and sensitivities," Royce relates.
The first class session takes the students through a "milestone exercise" aimed at helping them understand themselves. "This is based on a playwriting process," Royce explains. "I ask them to list as many milestones as they can in three minutes. Then I meet with them individually to hone down the milestones into a workable plan. Like an executive producer, I act as a sounding board."
In their final cuts, students select scenes that result in videos reflecting "courageous emotional content and authentically personal visual environments," Royce says.
The young man from Mexico, Javier Serrano, a junior marketing major, says he believes the video experience will prove invaluable when he someday owns his own advertising agency. He videotaped the process of becoming an American citizen, except for the ceremony because he wasn't allowed to take a camera into a federal building.
"But I taped what I could — my classes, legal documents, reactions of my relatives and friends. And now I carry a camera around with me whenever I can."
The students range in age from late teens to early thirties, says Royce, and represent a wide variety of cultures, a fact that impressed the instructor greatly when she arrived on the Newark campus last year. "Once I got to Rutgers, I just fell in love with the student population," she recalls.
A public screening of videos from the fall semester of the class "Video Diaries: Taking Video Personally" will take place 6–9 p.m. Monday, Dec. 18, in the Dana Room on the fourth floor of the Dana Library, hosted by library director Lynn Mullins.
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