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Ferris grad and WWTV/WWUP-TV 9 & 10 photojournalist Stephanie Heuker tries out a glide-cam during the fourth annual Ferris Video Festival.

    In Auditorium 004 of the Instructional Resource Center a high-school student from Northport is strapping on the harness for a glide-cam – a counterweighted video camera with built-in monitor. Once the camera is turned on, dizzying images of the audience are projected on a screen in the front of auditorium as the camera dips and, well, glides.
    Just across the hall, other students are watching a black and white silent video that seems like an updated Charlie Chaplin or Monsieur Hulot film, which segues to a color video about a high-school mascot gone bad.
    The fourth annual Ferris Video Festival maybe isn’t quite Cannes or Sundance, but more than 100 students are honing their skills in such workshops as “High Definition Production,” “The Art of Color Temperature” and “The Glidecam – For Smooth Operators.”
    “The festival is an effort to give high-school students an opportunity to show their video work to a larger audience,” explains Fred Wyman, Television and Digital Media Production program coordinator. “We set up a competition so they can submit videos to us, then invite them to campus for screenings and seminars.”
    In addition to it being the fourth year of the festival, it’s also the 25th anniversary of the program, so several alumni are on campus to host sessions, attend the next day’s alumni luncheon or just to check up on things.
    Which is what Stephanie Heuker is doing.
    “When I was a student here I was part of the Media Communications Association group that put this on, so the festival is near and dear to me,” says the photojournalist for northern Michigan’s WWTV/WWUP-TV 9&10 News. “I’m just happy to be here – it’s exciting.”
    No festival is complete without the opportunity to network. The high-school students get the chance to learn about Ferris’ TDMP program while interacting with Ferris students and industry professionals as well.
    One of them is Jeff Gnagney, a former instructor in what used to be simply the Television Production Program. Today, Gnagney is a television consultant with the Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency. He’s responsible for producing instructional videos for teacher professional development. He also produces DVDs and does computer training for K-12 teachers with the help of interns from Ferris.
    “I usually have one or two a year,” says Gnagney. “Being a former faculty member I realize the quality and caliber of the students. I put them to work right away on projects. We have a series called ‘Technology to Go,’ which are 12-13 minute episodes designed for teachers who want to learn how to integrate technology in the classroom. It’s also a weekly cable show we put on. In addition, we take multiple episodes and produce instructional, interactive DVDs that become resource material for our technology training workshops for our teachers.”
    With the advent of digital media, these budding video-makers will have a wide range of options open to them. They can certainly work in television, the corporate world or for the next wave of rock stars. Joe Birkmire, who works for the U. S. Professional Tennis Association, is at the festival to give a panel on producing sports programs, which he does for the Tennis Channel. Peter Schneider, who is giving a session on low budget production, produces safety videos but has freelanced overseas, working for the Swiss Army, among others.
    From there, it’s not hard to imagine these creative young people armed with the latest equipment in even more exotic locations (Schneider says, not surprisingly, he got to “play with a lot of nice toys” working for the Swiss Army).
    Coppolas, beware. The foundations of the next filmmaking dynasty are perhaps being laid right on the Ferris State campus in a few darkened rooms on an otherwise sunny April afternoon.