While the old adage of “Teamwork makes the dream work” may seem cliché, the idea of collaboration has proven to be a successful model for many things including student projects and work.
Last summer five University of Wisconsin-River Falls students and two faculty members traveled to Wiesbaden, Germany for a weeklong intensive experience that not only proved to be successful but literally changed their lives on many levels!
The International Media CoSpace conference hosted by RheinMain University’s Media Conception & Production Department featured presenters and attendees from around the world that included Germany, Norway, Thailand, United States and others, with English being the common language.
In addition to the conference, there was a collaborative short film project from a program called “The International Travelling Classroom” which paired RheinMain graduate degree students with UWRF undergrads, that was funded in part thanks to the generous Erasmus Plus grant program.
The short film project was inspired by the “48 Hour Film Competition” where teams of filmmakers produce short films based on randomly assigned criteria, such as genre, characters and lines of dialogue over the course of a weekend, which has been a UWRF campus tradition for years. However, in the case of the international film project, teams were assembled weeks in advance for virtual preproduction meetings between UWRF and RheinMain students that led to some of the work on the projects to be done prior to the arrival of the Americans such as scripting, location scouting and casting of actors.
For most of the River Falls students, it was their first time traveling internationally, and after a nine-hour flight the group finally arrived in Germany where we were warmly welcomed by our RheinMain hosts at the airport. Introductions were made and we were able to put names with faces in person, which was not only a wonderful introduction to German culture but the beginning of a productive relationship and kick off to the week’s activities.
The three teams of student filmmakers set off to work going their separate ways, while the faculty attended the International Media CoSpace conference who shared experiences with partner media production programs that ranged from student study abroad opportunities to faculty and staff collaborations and also resulted in forging new partnerships and plans for the future.
After a busy four days of filmmaking and cultural experiences, the event culminated with a screening party where the students debuted the short films and celebrated their hard work on the big screen which was a gratifying conclusion to the International Travelling Classroom experience.
It was clear that the UWRF students gained valuable new production skills through the peer mentoring and hands-on experiential learning that took place during the week and also made new lifelong friendships that could prove useful for future career development and international networking, which for all was a dream come true!
Erik L. Johnson
Professor
University of Wisconsin-River Falls
