Students encouraged to get behind the camera, capture life at BU

Starting Monday, film majors won’t be the only students shooting footage at Boston University.

More than 100 students committed on Facebook to work with the Institute for Intellectual Independence to create a documentary about life at BU. The institute asked students spend the week shooting for the documentary, titled “BU in a Week.”

Darrien Garay, a graduate student in the science and medical journalism program and director of the project, will compile the footage into a film, which will screen at the BU Ideas Festival on April 20.

The concept for the documentary was inspired by the “Life in a Day” documentary directed by Kevin MacDonald. The 90-minute film was a compilation of footage shot by people around the world on July 24, 2010.

“The way I imagined it, and the way ‘Life in a Day’ was, was really chopped up,” Garay said. “It was made almost by making a video collage of people’s lives. It becomes less important who they are. It’s kind of just, what is BU from a student’s perspective?”

The objective of the project is to define BU based on students’ daily experiences, said College of Arts and Sciences junior Demarius “DJ” Walker, founder of the institute and one of the leaders of the project.

By reaching out to different groups on campus, Walter said he hopes to represent BU’s diverse community.

“Hopefully, through the power of reaching out to those groups we get enough people to submit footage that will allow us to see [not only] the diversity of BU but also the similarities,” Walker said.

Walker said “BU in a Week” incorporates the institute’s goals to promote intellectual independence and inclusive, substantive public discourse.

“We’re trying to hold these conventions, idea festivals, conferences where we get students together who normally wouldn’t be talking to each other,” he said. “To connect that to the ‘BU in a Week’ project, the reasoning behind it is one we want to get people to actually start thinking about reflecting about what it is that they’re doing on a daily basis.”

The Liquid Fun Improv Comedy troupe is one of the student groups submitting footage of its annual “Running on Empty” 24-hour improv marathon March 23, said President Shawn Musgrave, a CAS senior.

“We figured we’d submit some footage that we were already going to take of the marathon,” he said.  “A lot of funny stuff happens because everyone is up for a full 24 hours.”

Musgrave said Liquid Fun members were enthusiastic about the documentary and curious to see how it turned out.

“A lot of people talk about the BU experience as if there were just one,” he said. “I think this is a cool way to show how many different ways people approach being at BU.”

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences junior Gina Mucciardi, who committed to shooting footage for the project, said she hopes to get the most realistic footage possible.

“I want to get the stuff that every BU kid deals with throughout the course of the day,” she said. “From little minor things, from the crosswalks to opening some of the doors. You know, some of the doors get stuck. Really small things like that that everybody experiences.”

Mucciardi said the project is one of the first projects that has encouraged her to become involved in the BU community beyond class and work.

“I’m really excited about this. I really see its potential to be really cool,” she said.  “This is the first thing that I’ve done that I feel like is very active in the BU community.”

CAS senior James Boggie, who plans to contribute to the documentary, said the project teaches students how to evaluate the various perceptions of BU’s campus.

He said, “We are all going to be going off into communities that need work, that need help and that need people who are able to critically think about their own lives and the people around them.”