Visual and Media Arts: Allison Duggan, Sophomore

The pandemic hit right when I was supposed to start gaining experience with production … and it basically skewed my understanding of how production works. All the experience I’ve had [making films], has been through the pandemic and onwards—nothing before it really.

Because I didn’t [get that experience], I really noticed that during these projects, I didn’t really know how to do anything with the equipment—how to put any of it away, know what to grab, what to plug in, stuff like that—because there was no way of knowing that. 

Last semester, I took Introduction to Film Production, and I noticed a definite difference from the class my professor would have taught before the pandemic—he kept saying that, too. The Bolex [16 mm film camera] is a piece of equipment no one from this time period really knows how to use, unless you’ve been taught. Learning that is hard enough as it is, but [our professor] had less time to demonstrate how to shoot with it. He tried to show us over Zoom, because that was most practical for the schedule. Imagine him demonstrating this 1920s film camera from your own room—you can’t really learn without doing it hands on.