Seniors cap off the year with final projects - Part 1

By Molly McGonigle

Read about other projects in Part 2

While many students are procrastinating their way through spring quarter's heat, seniors in the communication department are laboring over their capstone video projects.

Seniors Danny DeMarco, Bonnie Burgart and Justin Depositar are creating a dramatic film titled "Nowhere in Particular" for their senior project.

Producing the film has been a major time commitment. Two years ago, Depositar began the script in a screenwriting class. The original version was the length of a feature film, but the capstone version has been shortened.

The plot follows a young man who starts dealing drugs to pay for his mother's cancer treatment and tries to get a fresh start on his life after she dies.

Along the way, the protagonist meets a girl in a very similar situation, and they work together to overcome their hardships.

"It's an action-based movie. It's kinda 'Boondock Saints'-ish, 'Domino'-ish," said DeMarco.

DeMarco described the motive for making the film. "San Jose can have certain pockets of people that you don't see all the time. Things happen behind the scenes."

Pre-production for the film began in the fall of 2007, when DeMarco and Depositar first met to finalize the script.

According to DeMarco, "Bonnie then joined the team during winter quarter as we continued to work out the kinks in our project. For the past seven weeks, this team has been filming and plans on spending the rest of the quarter editing."

In order to complete these projects, students have to find their own funding.

"We obviously get to use all the cameras and studio for free. But props, food and all that is all on us," said DeMarco. "We knew we had to prepare for spending, so we put together the movie based on a college student's budget."

Coordination proved to be the biggest challenge in the project. "Time management has been the biggest learning experience," said DeMarco.

DeMarco hopes that more students will take advantage of the capstone projects that the communication department offers.

"Our professors and equipment are really good. I think more students should take a chance to take classes in the communication department and I think they'll find they like it," he said.

Seniors Michele Karg and Breena Kerr are filming a documentary titled "(Un)sheltered" about the unrecognized homeless community in San Jose. "We stumbled upon this idea for this documentary about people who are 'invisibly' homeless with the help of Pastor Scott Wagers," said Kerr.

"They are families with children and multiple jobs, but they live in cars," she said.

Creating a documentary has been a challenge because of the time constraints of the 10-week quarter system.

"You just have to start filming and pray that you figure out what you are doing along the way," said Kerr.

The main character of the documentary is a woman who Karg and Kerr met at the Community Homeless Alliance Ministry of San Jose, CHAM.

The image of this woman and her children is fitting for the documentary, Karg said.

"You would never in a million years know she was homeless," said she. "She's super into fashion and has beautiful jewelry."

Kerr has learned a lot about the Santa Clara and San Jose communities. "I feel good about this documentary," said Kerr. "People will see it and feel inspired, just like I am."

Karg and Kerr hope to submit their final product to film festivals and local television stations.

In the meantime, the product of the seniors' hard work will be available to the Santa Clara community on June 11 from Media Services.

Contact Molly McGonigle at mmcgonigle@scu.edu.