Transcript: Discover Cin | Comm
CP: Welcome to our Discover Dawson podcast. Whether you’re considering a future in film, or you’re just curious about what goes on behind the scenes, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re going to explore Cinema l Communications, or Cin l Comm, for short.
It’s a profile of the Arts, Literature, and Communication, pre-university program at Dawson College. Two Cin l Comm teachers, Kim Simard and Dipti Gupta, are here to answer your questions. Let’s dive right in. Kim, with all your experience, who is Cin l Comm for?
KS: Who it’s really for, are students who just want to explore. I think we’re lucky in our program to be able to explore the world through a media lens, to really be able to look at the work that people have made in documentary, in journalistic ways, in so many different aspects of what communications and cinema have to give the world culturally, and we’re able to kind of delve in to those topics. They work as entry points for us to discuss larger things that are happening in the world, and I think this is really key. I think this is kind of …we’re lucky as teachers to be able to have that as a venue.
CP: And Dipti, what are your thoughts about who Cin l Comm is for?
DG: Cin l Comm is for any student who’s curious about media, who’s curious about knowing and learning how media works and how to effectively communicate with anyone anywhere, everywhere.
CP: Effectively communicating with anyone, anywhere. That sounds like a pretty transferrable kind of skill. So we’re talking about students who may like to work in communications, media, film, but it could be a very useful foundation for all kinds of studies at universities in social sciences or arts. Tell me about what some of our graduates go on to do.
DG: So before I do that, I actually just want to say that today, there is a communication office in every institution. There is a communication individual who’s actually kind of covering in every office space. So, even if students are taking our classes, they are being, they are getting ready for the world in certain respects. So the students are actually taking a whole variety of courses. It’s not just about one skill or the other. It’s actually kind of being extremely broad, because communications touches upon the sciences and the arts.
CP: What kind of courses do you take?
DG: So the courses are from introducing them to the history, the aesthetics, as well as the background of both film and communication. So there are lots of exploratory kind of classes in the very first term, and so on. Moving on to, you know, video production, video basics, communication theory, film theory, with sound practices. They’re always looking at a whole variety of media while they’re studying with us.
CP: And I I think the students have a lot of fun here at school. So I think it’s a joy to come to school and in terms of perseverance and sticking with it, you know? Some students find it a very big leap to go from high school to CEGEP. No doubt it is, but when you’re doing something stimulating, you get hands-on learning, you have a small learning community, it’s great, right? What is a day in the life for a student here in Dawson in Cin l Comm?
KS: We’re not gonna require an excessive amount of reading, like perhaps maybe Social Science or other programs. There’s some there, for sure, and we are gonna develop critical thinking, but there’s this thing that we require of students, which is that you have to invest time. And a lot of the time is invested on just trial and error, hands-on stuff like you mentioned. So those who are interested and it always follows your interests, right? Like, uh, you have a variety of different choices. We do recommend that you take script writing, and you do have prerequisites that you have to take at the beginning. But those prerequisites are often, like, very hands-on opportunities as well to explore, perhaps podcast making, for example, working with photography, just understanding how images in media kind of shape our world and how we in turn can have an influence on that through being more media literate.
Like, we have students sometimes we’ll see them here, you know, all day, almost, you know, working on projects. And of course, teachers are around to help out, but ultimately, it comes down to, you know, their self-motivation. and working in teams sometimes will provoke that motivation to go a little bit further as well, because you are kind of, you know, working in tandem with a lot of people and a lot of people depend on you to have that particular, whatever role you’ve chosen to produce, right? Whatever it is that you said you would, There’s an interesting thing, I think that happens in those kinds of environments. If we’ve facilitated it well, which I think, as a department we do very well, if we have facilitated it well, then you won’t even notice how challenging some of these assignments are, how challenging some of these projects are, ’cause they feel like home.
CP: Can you tell me about some of those really interesting student projects?
KS: When I had asked them to kind of think beyond cinema, think beyond the screen, like, just bums in seats watching a screen, what could they do? This always happens. Some students get very nervous with this, okay, what am I supposed to do? Do I work sculpturally? What do I do you know? And whenever students come to me with an idea, I say yes. I just say yes, and we try to develop it from there, to try to get students thinking about how they can work beyond cinema or beyond just working with a screen. This one student came into my office, and he was very, very anxious about being able to do something that was required in the class. So I tried to let him know that the requirement is just that he explores things. And so I started asking him, like, what are some of the things that you that you like to visualize, but that aren’t necessarily, that you’re not able to capture with a camera. And so he started saying, “Well, I really like pressing on my eyes and seeing the effect that it has on my eyes when the light is kind of there, but it’s kind of different colours, and it kind of looks like, and then we both said at the same time: “a kaleidoscope.” And then he was like, “yeah, yeah, it kind of looks like a kaleidoscope.” And then I was like, “Okay.” I was like, “So, how could you reproduce that feeling for us in the classroom without there being just one, you know, a single channel screen? And so he said, “Hmmm.” And this was a recent story, so students had not necessarily been exposed to, like, overhead projectors before. So I said, “Have you ever seen an overhead projector?” And I brought him to this room where we have this old technology that we never use, but we keep around because no one really wants to throw it away. And I brought the overhead projector, and I said, “This is something that’s kind of cool. It shoots light out, and you can put different things, like, on it, different colours, different shapes, or whatever, to project it, and it can project very large, and it can project anywhere in the room. And I said, if you really want to, we could get several of them and present them, and have them ready for you to present something. And he said, “Whoah, so I could make, like a, like a kaleidoscope in the room.” And I said, “Yeah, I think you should do that.” And then he said, “Okay.” The next week, he comes back, I’ve got the I’ve got the overhead projectors ready. I think I had about three. We turn them on, we dust them off. It smells because I don’t know if you know this experience, but like when you plug something in that hasn’t been plugged in for a long time, it kind of has that, like electrical, dusty smell. I don’t know how else to describe it. And he has these acetates, like different colours, different things that he bought at the dollar store, different things that he’s going to put on there on these things. And he said, “Okay, everybody. sit down. I’m gonna make a live kaleidoscope effect. And he puts all the different colours and shapes and images, all one on top of the other, and it switches from each overhead projector to another. And everybody in the class was like, “This is so bleepin’ cool.”
DG: There was a student with us, and she wrote a very exciting and interesting story about a tree that had actually got infested, and how she rejuvenated it and sustained it and did not allow her parents to cut it down. And then even while the family moved away, she continues to connect and visit the tree and the new owners of that home. So she did that entire project as a mini small animation. And that is on our website, and there are so many other projects on our website. We have a Cin l Comm website, which is constantly updated and upgraded with every Dawson Film Festival and night that we have at the end of the term.
CP: Tell us about the facilities and the equipment available to Cin l Comm students.
DG: We have fabulously well-equipped studios. We have a lot of different programs, complete suites in every computer that the students have access to. We have sound booths, recording spaces, all the DLSR cameras, sound equipment, and so on.
CP: What are the faculty like, and how do they stay up to date?
DG: So we are constantly reading, researching, working on a project, in different capacities, and every single faculty member is somehow or the other linked in so many different ways.
CP: We have filmmakers, we have journalists, we have writers, we have all kinds of talent on faculty.
DG: Absolutely. And we always tell every of our new students coming in saying that come and spend time one on one with our teachers. You will get to know them, you’ll also learn their journey and then they will be able to guide you in your journey.
CP: So tell me, I think it’s for people who would like to possibly study cinema later, people who are creative, people who enjoy media, who enjoy writing, who enjoy videoing, podcasting, but not only, right? So tell me about how it might prepare a person who was maybe just searching and exploring, not quite sure what they would like to do, but they would know they would like to go to university.
DG: Of course, the linear method that people often take is going into film production, animation production, media studies, communication studies, journalism, cultural studies, digital media. However, our graduates have actually gone into anthropology, psychology, philosophy, even, I remember a couple of students who actually gone into computer science after taking a couple of classes in math or whatever the prerequisites are for that program. So I would say to encourage all the students and parents who are listening to this is that they should be able to really spend the two years in the most creative manner and then be able to explore anything that they would like to do. This is also an introduction in some ways, but also a steppingstone to the world, which is so exciting and interesting. So if at this given time, that they can do it in a creative manner, it will also stay with them for the rest of their life. It’s like creating a toolbox, which you can pull out anything that you want at any given time in your life. As they say, it is art that sustains the soul in the most dire of time. So imagine having that in your toolbox, and you will be able to face any adversity in the journey of your life, at any given time.
CP: If a student, a high school student or student somewhere else who’s interested in Cin l Comm, would like to find out more, what should they do?
KS: You know, I think the best thing to do is to go on our website. First off, and then sign up for a student for a day. student for a day is an opportunity for students to come in, see if they like it. They might come into our class and get a sense of, uh, you know, they can come and join the whole class, like for the whole duration of the class. They might come and visit, and we can show them around our facilities, show them the technology and the labs that we have, et cetera. We can introduce them to other faculty. But ultimately, if you’re thinking that you might want to come into a program like Cin l Comm, just come and visit.
