Four groups of students worked to direct, produce and edit four television commercials for the university.
The commercials promote Ball State’s goals of being student-centered, community engaged and a 21st century public research university as well as promoting the athletic department. They began airing this semester.
When President Paul W. Ferguson took office in 2014, he and his senior adviser Julie Hopwood took a scheduled tour of the telecommunications facilities.
They discussed Ball State’s new campaign and “that’s when the lightbulb went off,” said Tim Pollard, chair of the telecommunications department. He suggested something that had never been done before: having the telecommunications department produce the commercials.
The idea was originally rejected, but Pollard didn't give up.
At the beginning of Fall semester, Pollard, Hopwood and the strategic communications department held a meeting. Pollard pitched the idea again; this time, Hopwood said yes.
After the meeting, Pollard approached four faculty members with the proposition.
“All four of them said yes because they saw the possibilities and the opportunity to do something that had never been done before,” Pollard said. “Then they went to the students and every single one of them was enthusiastic about it… they wanted to do it because these are the Ball State commercials… imagine that on your resume.”
Sophomore telecommunications major Mick Tidrow was a co-producer on the athletics commercial along with Zac Miklusak, a senior digital sports production major.
Tidrow said he was sitting in Sports Link when he was approached by Chris Taylor, the director of digital sports production, who asked Tidrow if he would like to participate.
“Zac and I were cool with the idea and we really wanted to go forward with it because we knew it was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up,” Tidrow said.
The first thing Tidrow and Miklusak did was create scripts for the athletes. In addition, the two edited, produced, directed and set up the shots for the commercial along with their team.
The script for the athletes was written one line at a time and the commercial covers all 17 sports at Ball State. Both the athletes and students in Sports Link wrote “Dear Ball State” letters to get their thoughts and outside perspective.
“We had the athletes just recite all the lines and we chose which line that they said the best and used that… kinda mixed and matched to see what we could come up with,” Tidrow said.
Tidrow said that the biggest challenge was preproduction and being unaware of how much work is necessary before a shoot. He wants to be a sports announcer and broadcaster, but also loves the production and said he could also see himself producing and editing content as a side job.
“I loved every minute of it, but you don’t know how much it’s going to take to get to where you need to get to,” Tidrow said. “I love to edit and really just put all of it together and make one final product just come alive. The production work is starting to really grow on me and I’m starting to enjoy it.”
Junior telecommunications major Sadie Lebo was the producer of the community engagement commercial. Her responsibilities included scheduling, planning locations and talking with outside sources.
Lebo said the crew was treated like professionals and because of that, she feels that they did become professionals.
“Just the fact that they believed in the students to do this was what was truly amazing about the project,” Lebo said. “It was how Ball State talks about being very immersive and very community engaged, which is what Ball State’s all about, and I really got to be a part of that.”
Junior telecommunications major Micah Holtgraves was one of three directors of photography for the community engagement commercial and set up the camera and actors for the commercial shots.
“It was great experience and definitely something that’s going to be worthwhile to put on my resume. I feel it’s very professional because this is the first time a university has actually had the students make the commercials so it’s a big deal,” Holtgraves said.