Dream Job: Social Studies

The EVC offers New York City youth 15-week workshops on documentary video production. These workshops involve the use of Sony HDR-HC1 and Panasonic AG-DVC30 cameras.

Video technology has changed dramatically since the Educational Video Center (EVC) was founded in the mid-1980s, but the mission of the New York nonprofit has remained largely the same: to show young people how to make documentaries and, in the process, further their artistic, career, and media-literacy skills and commitment to social change.

Indeed, the organization's original documentary workshop program is still alive and well, according to EVC Deputy Director Sebene Selassie. “We have a long relationship with New York City public high schools,” she says of the program. Students with an interest in media are referred to the EVC by their advisors, counselors, or teachers. Once they sign on, they begin an intensive journey — committing 12 hours a week for 15 weeks — to learn production, postproduction, research, interview, and animation skills while completing a documentary with a group of their peers. Sony HDR-HC1 and Panasonic AG-DVC30 cameras are used in the workshop, which has generated films on topics ranging from teenage pregnancy to recycling. The EVC hosts a screening at the end of the semester and allows participants to arrange other viewings, workshops, and discussions in schools and community centers through the nonprofit's community-engagement program. The EVC also offers Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV) paid production internships annually to six young people who otherwise could not have afforded to volunteer their time to gain on-the-job experience. “[YO-TV] is very in-depth in terms of the analysis of a topic and the amount of work that's put into research,” Selassie says. “They do lots of vérité-style shooting, more than you'd typically find in youth-produced media.” The most recent YO-TV project is Journeys Through the Red, White, & Blue, a documentary about youth participation in the voting process that was shot with a Sony DSR-PD150. The EVC and the youth producers screened the film at numerous venues in New York, Massachusetts, and Ohio before the election, and it also released 600 DVDs of the work.

Selassie says the EVC is engaged in a strategic planning process to examine what the organization's focus will be for the next five years. She says she expects the EVC to broaden its commitment to integrated media as well as expand its external education program, which trains educators in how to use media as part of their work inside and outside of the classroom.

For more information, visit www.evc.org.