Nine McDaniel students are roaming the capital of Hungary with their digital camcorders at the ready, exploring the city through the lens as part of Assistant Professor Jonathan Slade’s course “Documentary Production.”  It is being taught for the first time at McDaniel Budapest this semester.

“This class is exciting because it shows a person how things are done behind the scenes,” says Paul Colbert ’07, a District Heights, Md., native. “It is very interesting to view a city, its life and culture through a lens.”

Colbert’s recorded his boat ride through the caves of Tapolca, Taylor Hebden ’08 filmed her quest to replace a lost cell phone, and George House ’09 made a movie of his attempt to cook a traditional Hungarian dinner.

“Most people think that once you master the technology, you simply turn on a video camera and somehow magically you have a documentary,” says Slade, who heads up the Film and Video Studies minor in the Communication Department. “But these guys are learning that it’s more about storytelling: Finding compelling characters and telling their stories in an engaging and compassionate way. In essence, they are learning how to ‘write’ with images and sound.”

The class is divided into three crews, and every week each crew collaborates to shoot and edit a polished two- to five-minute video segment.  At the end of the semester, the class will assemble all the best segments to construct a feature-length documentary to be presented publicly.

“Budapest is a good place to shoot,” says Croatian native Sven Pomykalo ’07. “We have small groups of three people on each crew, with international students working together. We learn a lot from each other and about the city.”

The world premiere of their as yet untitled documentary is tentatively scheduled to screen in Budapest this December during final-exam week. It will be open to the public.