Followed around campus by cameras until they graduate, seven students from the class of 2007 will be the stars of a four-year documentary temporarily nicknamed “4D.”
“The documentary’s first driving vision is to focus on the major life changes that these students go through; their triumphs and failures, their success stories and how they deal with the growing up process of college,” said John Ur, Fairfield’s digital media and television producer who is in charge of the process.
Mark Ambrose, Desirae Brown, Adrian Gasparian, Kelly Henn, Chris MacDonald, J.P. Ryan and Ashley Toombs will deal with many issues in front of the camera for four years, ranging from relationship and roommate problems to family problems.
“The heart of the documentary lies in how they react, learn and change to the problems presented to them,” said Ur.
Because the director of the Media Center, Rev. James Mayzik, S.J. had decided to make the documentary only a few weeks before freshmen orientation, he tried to get volunteers from the class of 2007 there. After gathering 30-40 names, e-mails were sent out to the volunteers to see if they were still interested. Ur received 15 responses.
“I didn’t really think I was going to be picked because I’m not that interesting,” said Mark Ambrose ’07. “But I thought it was a cool idea to see how seven people were going to change during college. I figured, what the hell, go for it.”
During the summer, the Media Center employees visited 13 incoming freshmen’s homes for screenings. They took a camera and talked with the students and their families. The Media Center tried to get a sense of how the students would act on camera.
“The students have been really cool. They are generally very easygoing about us coming to film whenever and have been surprisingly very open to talking about things which are extremely personal,” said Ur.
“I’ve been pretty truthful,” said Chris MacDonald ’07. “I mean, I’ve said some pretty personal things, but I don’t want to look back and say to myself, ‘I wish I had said that.'”
Ur says he enjoys working on the documentary because the students are equally unique. Media Center employees involved include Ur, Mayzik, Casey Timmeny, and Jon Thomas, who hope they can successfully capture the freshmen’s unique stories of growth on camera.
The cameramen and some advanced television students follow the freshmen around once or twice a month. They are even followed into class!
“I try not to let the cameras affect what I say, because I’m just trying to be me,” said Ambrose. “After a while you get used to the camera following you, but at first it was weird, like when I was moving in. It was definitely weird when they were here and he [my roommate] came back from the shower. A good start to the semester.”
The students hope the taping will have a positive effect on their college experience.
“I think it will be fun. I want to see how I will change over four years. I also want other people to see my experiences so they can understand me better… It will help break down stereotypes,” said MacDonald.
Even though the process isn’t demanding, the freshmen may still choose to back out if they desire. Ur hopes that after committing so much time to the project they won’t, but he would never force anyone to stay.
“The success of this project is contingent upon their complete cooperation, so it would be very detrimental to our work if we tried to force someone to stick with it even if they weren’t into it,” said Ur.
“They’re respectful. They just want me to do what I do, and they never push anything,” said Ambrose.
The Media Center would like to deflect any comparison to the MTV show “The Real World.” Fairfield’s freshmen will be followed and be allowed to comment anytime during the taping, unlike the subjects on MTV who are asked to act like the cameras are never present.
“It’s not supposed to be ‘Real World’ soap opera kind of stuff. Hopefully we can make something more substantial that that,” said Ur.
So far, the Media Center is not sure how the footage will be presented and they probably won’t know until many tapes are edited. Fifty hours of tapes were collected during first semester alone. It is estimated that at that pace, there will be 400 hours of tapes to sort through by the time the students graduate.
“And it may be more than that… I’m going to guess that we’ll have 500 hours of footage at the end,” said Ur.
The Media Center hasn’t set a date for when the documentary will be released. The end could be on graduation day in 2007, or it may even go past that. Most likely, the project will be completed in the summer of 2008.
“I figure it’s going to take a couple of months of hard editing work to put this together,” said Ur.
Although there are no outside companies involved yet, it is Fairfield’s hope that this production will be aired on television in the future.
“It would be cool, but I don’t think about it too much right now. It’s just one guy following me around with a camera. But it’s weird that all this personal stuff I’m doing and saying could be on TV one day,” said Ambrose.
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