IW students create award winning documentary

MT. PLEASANT—A group made of Psychology and Digitial Media Design Iowa Wesleyan students created a national award winning video documentary for World Water Day.

They were recognized for excellence in the creation, production, and delivery of their video with a Gold Viddy Award, this past week.

According to Vice President for enrollment, Marketing, and Communications Meg Richtman, the documentary is named "The Water Project" and was created to generate awareness for the global issue of water conservation.

For the creation of the video, several students in the Positive Psychology course led by Professor of Psychology and Chair of Faculty, Dr. Cyndi Walljasper, lived on only two and a half gallons of water per day.

“Thinking about how many people around the world do not have access to clean water, we came up with the idea a couple of years ago to do the water project,” Walljasper said. “For this project, students had to go for three days with two and a half gallons of water to use each day from a jug and they had to carry it around all day. They had to reflect on that, which helped them appreciate water in new ways.”

The documentary required the students to use this limited amount of water for everything including drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes, and washing dishes for three days.

The students documented their thoughts and experiences in video.

Digitial Media Design students later compiled these videos with pre-and post-project interviews and a discussion of the overall project.

“Sometimes in Digital Media, we tend to focus on entertainment,” Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Art Roy Manfredi said. “When Dr. Walljasper brought this experiment to me, it was more of a way of bringing awareness to a specific topic. The whole idea was to take the subject we were given, increase awareness of it, and make something in a digestible format. One of the best parts of this project is that even my students, who weren’t part of this experiment, could empathize with the students who were.”

IW arranged to surprise the students with the award at a screening of “The Water Project,” their documentary, Wednesday.

There is no preset number of winners in a category. Entries are judged at random and not directly compared to other entries in their category. The objective of the judging is to recognize and reward “creative” achievement. It is a subjective process based on learned perceptions of creativity as opposed to measured results.

Viddy Award judging is designed to evaluate work solely on its own merit.

According to the Viddy website, judges examining the videos don’t compare entries, but instead look at each video on its own merit with questions such as: What was the first impression? Was the work inventive? Artistic? Resourceful? To the point? Eye-catching? Colorful? Is there a theme?

“Using a consensus method, judges verbalize their criticisms, compliments etc. and then agree on a score,” Viddy website states. “Entries receiving scores between 90-100 points are top level winners. Entries with 80-89 points are second level winners. Entries scoring from 70-79 receive honorable mention designation.”

To view The Water Project documentary is available for viewing on YouTube.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com