SCM Students Get “Lift” From Driving Engagement

This year’s theme for the School of Communication and Media is Driving Engagement and nowhere is this mission more clearly on display than in Sonja Bozic’s Transmedia Projects class. Students in the class are getting a very real-life grasp on some relevant social issues this semester. Working with their client, David Petersen, a writer, director, and producer of documentaries, students are given the task to explore one of his current works-in-progress, “Lift,” a documentary about the New York Ballet Theater’s program called Lift where the objective is to get homeless kids off the streets and into ballets. Bozic stated that the goal of the Lift project is "to inform people about the possibilities in life." Through dance, homeless children can hopefully develop the interpersonal skills that allow them to express themselves, something they cannot do on the streets.  

Students in Bozic’s class are working with various Transmedia elements throughout the semester including social media and websites to create something that Petersen may actually want to implement when it is presented to him at the end of the semester. The purpose of the class is to help “Lift,” the documentary about the ballet program, gain publicity but equally important is to show students what it is really like working with a client. Her class is not just working on a project for school, they are also learning about the challenging issues that the homeless confront every day.

Following Bozic’s simple guidelines, students are able to create whatever they want. Their final projects are completely their own, "That’s their vision" Bozic says, "I want my students to be open and creative. I don’t want to put them in a frame… I want them to be free to do absolutely whatever they want to do."  According to Bozic, her aim is to raise awareness of various societal problems while SCM students get to work on meaningful projects and become engaged in and out of class. Sonja expressed her goals for the students stating, "I’m hoping that they will get a new set of skills, deepening their understanding of building a story. I’m hoping the client is going to really use this."

The project will be presented to the client during the week of finals. Both Sonja and David are looking forward to the outcome. "It is an important issue" Sonja noted,  "I’m glad that my students are dealing with something relevant in society today. I’m proud of them for accomplishing this in one semester."

David Petersen has won several awards for this work including an Emmy Award for best editing and a Blue Ribbon Award from the American Film Festival. The themes of his projects focus mainly on people in search of a home. His work has been shown at numerous museums including The Museum of Modern Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, National Gallery of Art, and The Library of Congress. David Petersen was born in Minnesota, and is currently based in Brooklyn.

Sonja grew up in Serbia where she also got her bachelors degree in film editing. She later moved to America to get her Masters Degree in documentary filmmaking at the University of Oklahoma and is currently in the process of getting her PhD in Media Arts with her dissertation focusing on Transmedia.