Morehead State Media Productions

Morehead State University has been offering its media arts students in-depth, hands-on training for several years. Jeffrey Hill, professor of media production, who has been at Morehead since 2002, said students work on multiple projects.

“Their first semester here, they’re doing the deal, they’re doing the production work,” he said. “So by the time they get to their third or fourth year, they’re doing projects that are getting picked up by film festivals. They’re doing documentary projects that are being picked up by KET. So it’s a really great opportunity for the students.”

Students work on projects in groups of four to six. In their time with the program, he said students could easily be involved in 80 half-hour television shows and 40 Web-based projects.

Hill said that the department started a film festival about 12 years ago. On Friday evenings in the spring, media arts students come together and each gets an envelope with a character’s name, a prop, a genre, and a line of dialogue. “And they’ve got until Monday morning to make a movie,” he said. “And then that night, we do a world premiere at the local movie theater here in town.”

The screenings, complete with a red carpets, draw from 150 to 350 moviegoers. “Students have a really great opportunity, again, to do production work. That’s what it’s all about.”

Morehead State student Michael Jones worked on a film about the impact of local high school sports radio in the region. Now he is an intern with the football team, getting lots of hands-on experience in production, filming games and practices. “I think this major is probably about the most hands-on you can get for the career that you want to take,” he said.

Student Rikki Nelson made a film from her hometown of Ashland, “Garden Roller Rink.” She has always wanted to make a documentary about it. “I have been working at the Garden Roller Rink for seven and a half years,” she said. “Since my senior year of high school…I’ve been there so long, because my bosses, they’re family now, and I love roller skating, and just getting to interact with the kids.”

This segment is part of Kentucky Life episode #2217, which originally aired on May 13, 2017. Watch the full episode.