Film and TV

International student advisers usually struggle in keeping students engaged or behaved prior to the beginning of an important presentation. Especially in the case of the main Orientation presentation/speech, new international students are often distracted or lost in their new environment. In order to help them feel more comfortable, the implementation of a brief video reflecting current international students' college experience could be useful in keeping the new students engaged and behaved.

In order to keep the international students engaged, I would have the video feature successful current international students and have them talk about their genuine experience of how they achieved such success. As the readings stated, having an engaged audience is good but having the audience involved emotionally is even better. This way, the story telling process from new international students, under the shape of interviews, will generate ideas of how to get involved on campus, where to seek for resources, where they can find support and peers, etc. It will be a seamless learning experience for new students and simultaneously. From the current international students' perspectives, they will be reflecting on their own success and will hopefully sense a feeling of pride from achieving such great experiences. Another goal of this video is to have the audience empathize with the interviewees and that's when we'll know that the video has been a success.

In producing the video, the committee in charge has to do some research in terms of locating the successful international students, hear their stories (before they get shared), research on what effects or soundtrack can be used to make it more appealing to the international community. Obviously, they would have to find a music/soundtrack that fits the visual that is being displayed. Even the timing of the music plays an important role in the film making process. In the readings, the author talks about power of silence as in "'quiet' is an effect." This makes complete sense when someone is talking. However, there are some special moments in which quiet can indeed be powerful depending on the moment during the video.

Some other aspects to take in consideration while making the video is that it can be manipulated. Truth and reality can be distorted in order to obtain the right outcome, in this case, impressing and engaging new international students. By editing the video, much essential footage can be lost; the director and the editor may have two very different perspectives on what should be showed at the end of the editing process.