When Instructor of Mass Communication Greg Mikolai was approached by Jay Seaton of The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel to work on a short film celebrating the paper’s 130th anniversary, he knew it would be a perfect opportunity for his students to gain hands-on experience in their chosen field.
“Mass Communication is an immersive program. You come in and you actually work on something. It isn't just theoretical," said Mikolai. "You're always going to have that hands-on experience."
The documentary, titled The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: Celebrating 130 Years of Community Service, ended up winning the Future Broadcasters Award for Best College Television from the Colorado Broadcasters Association.
This is the first Future Broadcasters Award for Colorado Mesa University.
The winning documentary was produced in Mikolai’s Documentary Production class last spring. The 10 students in the class were split up into five teams of two. Each team was assigned one of the five main topics the documentary covered regarding The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel’s history.
With instruction and support from Mikolai, all five teams conducted research, came up with questions for interviews, filmed interviews and B-roll, edited the footage and wrote narration scripts. From there, the five pieces were put together to create the completed documentary.
The final product warranted a premiere and Q&A at the Avalon Theatre, which had an audience of 400.
This project not only provided students with hands-on experience, but the recognition from the award will be beneficial to the student’s future careers in the mass communication field.
“To have something like this on your resume and not only the experience of it, but then the recognition of it later, is always beneficial to somebody's career,” said Mikolai.
Those interested in watching the award-winning documentary can view it below or watch it on the CMU-TV YouTube channel.