Julie Wyman says by making documentaries, students can develop their own survival skills tool kit. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis photo)
Filmmaker develops new literacies for students
A weightlifter’s story
Julie Wyman discusses the challenges of making a documentary about Olympic weightlifter Cheryl Haworth and explains how making this film changed her in unexpected ways. [more…]
Excerpts from Buoyant
Julie Wyman is both the filmmaker and a performer in Buoyant. This excerpt begins with the Inventor (Wyman) busy at work on her Drystroke Swimulator machine; moves into a story about Archimedes fascination with pure mathematics’ lines and shapes; and ends with the Padded Lilies, a group of synchronized swimmers, telling us what it’s like to have bodies that are so buoyant. (Flash, 4:38 min)
The Padded Lilies prepare for their appearance on the Jay Leno Tonight Show. As they take to the airwaves, the Inventor masters her Drystroke Swimulator and we learn about the story of Archimedes’ “Eureka” moment in the bathtub. (Flash, 5:06 min)
Looking through Julie Wyman’s lens, you wonder how Olympic medalist Cheryl Haworth, at 5-foot-9 and 300 pounds, is one of the world’s premier athletes.
And then you realize that the weight is to her advantage.
Hold it. Fat is unhealthy. Fat is supposed to be bad. How can this be?
Wyman is hoping for just that reaction when people see her new documentary sometime next year. As an artist devoted to new insights into the human condition, Wyman is using video to change how people think about body weight and health.
Since she arrived three years ago as an assistant professor at in the Technocultural Studies Program, Wyman also has been teaching video and sound production, thus developing “new literacies” for students who will need more than the mastery of books and statistical analysis to negotiate a media-saturated world.
‘Filmmaking is complicated…. You have to have multiple levels of vision simultaneously — all the while, you have to make sure you don’t trip over a cable and fall on the ground.’
Julie Wyman
“As a knowledgeable young person going out into this culture, it is important to express oneself in writing, but also with other modes of communication, as well — Web, sound and video, graphic design,” says Wyman, who came from the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
Mastering these new literacies “means being able to utilize and communicate with some of the tools, but it also means knowing how to read them.”
A Bay Area resident since childhood, Wyman holds an MFA from UC San Diego, and has created a number of documentaries, including A Boy Named Sue, which was shown on Showtime and has won a number of national awards.
She sat down for a Q&A on making art, teaching and being at UC Davis.
Why are you at UC Davis?
This is a very exciting place to be. I’m at a research university and among colleagues who are thinking about location, politics, gender and technology, and about making interesting connections between these areas.
I could also say I’m at UC Davis because of Technocultural Studies. This is an interdisciplinary program whose emphasis is on looking at connections between things: the connection between technology or science and culture, and the way that inventions, knowledge and gadgets actually shape our everyday life.
It is also good to be here because I am close to the Bay Area, which is the center of the Health at Every Size and the Size Acceptance movements. There is also a multicampus research group, Studies of Food and the Body, which I am part of, that combines food studies with culture and the body.
Technocultural Studies is a fairly new program. How does this program’s philosophy differ from what you would have found at a university 10 years ago?
It’s a new generation and a different media paradigm. For one thing, it is very important to be able to work across media. In other words, we are about media plural as opposed to medium singular, which doesn’t only mean that we’re teaching people to develop a lot of different skills; we’re teaching people to combine skills in order to go across: to create sounds for a space, to create a Web site that talks to other Web sites.
What do you expect your students to get out of your video production, digital cinema or critical media courses?
Whether a person goes on to be a filmmaker or not, I want them to understand how images are put together, how stories are shaped and crafted, how news is shaped, how images are put together…how facts are also crafted.
I also want people to have experience stepping out of their comfort zone. Filmmaking, particularly documentary making, is a good way to do that because you are engaging with subjects by taking on a responsibility and developing a level of trust.
I see filmmaking as a survival skill tool kit. If you’ve made a short documentary, you have probably developed an ability to take other people’s lives seriously and to come to understand what you didn’t before.
When I think of making a documentary, I think about how complicated it is, how many steps you have to take. How hard is it?
It’s like three-dimensional writing. Filmmaking is complicated. At every stage of the game — planning the production, shooting and then editing — there is a lot of thinking and strategizing on many levels simultaneously.
When you are filming a situation, you have to see it on its own terms and understand its importance to the subjects at that very moment, but then, at the same time, you have to step back and think about the situation in terms of the story you are telling. You have to have multiple levels of vision simultaneously — all the while, you have to make sure you don’t trip over a cable and fall on the ground.
What is the best part about making a documentary?
There are two best parts for me — two different levels of communication. One is during the filming. When I am perceiving Cheryl and putting it on camera, it is really rewarding. I’ve understood something about her and about weightlifting.
And then, the other end of things is showing a film to an audience when it is done and feeling like they get it –and that the film communicated something to them. I provided them with an experience that goes beyond words. It happens for a few moments at the very end of hours and years of work, but it is very powerful.