Comms Productions Featured on Canal Savoir

Concordia has renewed its partnership with Canal Savoir, an educational television station that broadcasts in English and French to more than 4 million homes across Canada. This month, the station will begin broadcasting film projects produced by students in Concordia’s Communication Studies, Journalism and Film Production departments.

Sylvie Godbout, Canal Savoir’s general manager, says she’s thrilled that Concordia has renewed its affiliation with the educational network, which broadcasts content produced by universities across the province.

“Concordia has a strength, which is its student productions, and we are able to provide the opportunity to showcase some of these student productions somewhere other than just in the classroom or over the internet,” she says.

Communication studies student Elise Høgberg says it’s exciting news for her and her fellow students. “I think it’s amazing. I’m really, really excited, and it’s an honour to have this opportunity,” she said.

Høgberg says the pressure to complete coursework means students rarely have the time or the resources to explore the possibility of getting their productions broadcast on television. “It’s really great for our CVs to have things broadcast.”

Technical instructor Michael Smart says Salzman’s piece is “interesting because he’s talking about his parents, and how making this dish takes him back to his loving home.”

Høgberg’s impressive stop-animation production What on Earth was That? will be featured during a half-hour show called Tell Me a Story, a compilation of videos produced by students in Associate Professor Rae Staseson’s third-year video class in the Department of Communication Studies.

Students in the same class also produced a series of self-portraits for a second half-hour show called My Story. Technical instructor Michael Smart, who assisted Staseson’s third-year video students with their productions, says he was impressed by the quality of what they produced.

“We had a group of very motivated and talented students,” he says, before describing one of the self-portraits that stood out for him. “The last piece on theMy Story show is called Pasc n’ Cheese. It’s just shots of the student, Pascal Salzman, making macaroni and cheese, which was his favourite dish as a kid. It’s interesting because he’s talking about his parents, and how making this dish takes him back to his loving home.”

Concordia’s journalism department is contributing three half-hour shows produced in the fall. The two segments produced by students in the journalism diploma program’s Advanced Television Journalism follow the format of a news show covering local stories.

The half-hour show produced by undergraduate students in the Advanced Television Journalism class contains a series of in-depth feature stories. The students present the segments of the show using a unique conversational format.

Journalism students will produce two more one-hour documentaries, and at least one other half-hour show for Canal Savoir this winter.

Salzman and the finished product. | All images taken fromPasc n’ Cheese

Peter Downie, a lecturer and the director of the graduate program in the Department of Journalism, says the fact that the students know their projects are going to be broadcast across the country has an impact on how they approach their work. “It just adds something a little extra to the production, knowing it’s going to be seen publicly,” he says.

For the next round of productions for Canal Savoir, Downie says he may look at the possibility of producing a show featuring students’ photojournalism essays.

“This really gives us a chance to experiment with different techniques and different forms,” he says. “My own experience is that students are far more creative now, and their creativity comes alive if you give them a forum in which to exercise it.”