Digital Stories and Documentaries

November 18, 2024

students from the 2023 Dartmouth x Fulbright University Vietnam immersion

From Ho Chi Minh to Hanover

Motorbikes rumble past. Diesel fumes swirl and billow in their wake. The sun’s heat permeates. Humidity cloaks you in an extra layer. It’s 9am in a Ho Chi Minh City market. Hawkers splash water across their fruits and vegetables to make them sparkle. Brilliant green, yellow, orange, and red varieties cluster before you. You recognize some produce, but not all. The air is thick, vibrant, alive. With your camera, you capture some of these moments. In three weeks, you have to present a 10-15 minute documentary about food culture and the urban experience. There’s so much to see. So many people to meet and interview. You're thrilled but need help bringing your ideas to life. You put a reminder in your phone to connect with Susan Simon, the multimedia instructional designer from Dartmouth Libraries’ Jones Media Center. She's on this trip, too, sharing her expertise, advice, and genuine feedback.

This scenario plays out each year across varied settings. Simon shares her digital media and storytelling expertise, encouraging students to ideate, develop, and produce unique and compelling digital media stories. In her role at Dartmouth Libraries, she deepens the Dartmouth community’s understanding of the power of media, not just consuming it but creating it. As the creative powerhouse behind Dartmouth's digital storytelling initiatives, her impact crosses multiple academic disciplines and has taken her, along with her students, across the globe for more than two decades.

Susan Simon with students from the 2023 Dartmouth x Fulbright University Vietnam immersion

One of Simon's long-standing and rewarding collaborations is with Ed Miller and Sujin Eom’s class, ASCL 70.22 Developing Vietnam: History, Environment, and Culture. A high point of the class is traveling to Vietnam and, while there, co-writing research papers and co-producing documentaries. In 2023, Simon joined Miller and the students in Vietnam for a more direct, hands-on, and impactful filming and production experience. This December, she will travel again to Vietnam, joining Miller, Eom, and a new group of 23 Dartmouth students.

What’s different this time around is how Miller and Eom, in partnership with the Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education, expanded the curriculum and student learning experience. For the first time, Dartmouth hosted an introductory, four-day intensive, inviting the Fulbright University Vietnam students to Hanover for a preliminary round of meetings and filmmaking. Together, the Fulbright and Dartmouth students researched a Dartmouth-specific subject and then created a one-to-three-minute documentary by the morning of day four. This introductory assignment acted as practice for the longer documentaries they’ll create together in Vietnam.

"ASCL 70.22 Developing Vietnam: History, Environment, and Culture" gather to show their final mini films in The LINK

But these students aren’t expert filmmakers—yet. So, in her sessions, Simon shared how best to create mini media projects. She suggested they welcome the “stumbling” nature of first starting a project and to “thrive, have fun, laugh a bit, relax, and do good work.” She encouraged them to notice and lean into each other’s strengths and lift each other up, while reminding them that this group work is setting them up for a lifetime of group projects! Simon also homed in on tips and tricks for excellent, engaging, and entertaining documentary filmmaking and storytelling, bolstering their confidence with the challenge to “know the rules first to then break them well.”

Red Po, a member of the “Urbanista” film team, wrote how his experience at Dartmouth was “unforgettable.” He shared that Simon’s “energy and lecture [were] magical gifts from Dartmouth.” Red Po learned “loads” from her lecture and enjoyed discussing and shooting the film with his friends.

As an Arts student, I'm really serious about the film part of the final assignment. Having the opportunity to make my first documentary film with careful research is one of my biggest reasons for choosing this Developing Vietnam course. As a result, I am passionate about learning more to make a meticulously, tightly constructed film.

Red Po, Fulbright University Vietnam student

Wendel Cox and one of the Dartmouth x Fulbright University Vietnam project teams

Not only did Simon teach documentary filmmaking at a lightning pace (and the students created funny and informative mini films as a result), but other Libraries staff brought their expertise to the week. Robbie Abel '24, the Jones Memorial Digital Media Fellow, offered hands-on support throughout the week as students shot and edited their films. Wendel Cox, Research & Learning Librarian for Humanities & Social Sciences, led sessions to support them in their information-finding and research process. Cox demonstrated how to best search for historical content that would inform and inspire their story. He also shared with them how, from their findings, they can build upon the research they started during the four-day intensive until their research papers are due in December. Cox also reminded the students to avoid scope creep. “You can't do everything, but you can do a lot.” He also advised them to “be joyous in your research and information seeking” because you may stumble upon fantastic information that appears at first as a distraction or segue but ends up being inspiring.

At the end of the four days, the students gathered in The LINK to watch their final mini-documentaries about Dartmouth life and culture.

In the closing comments before the Fulbright students boarded a bus to Boston, the Fulbright team shared thanks to everyone at Dartmouth who helped to make this immersive experience possible. They expressed their excitement about the week’s results, their hopes for how this gathering could be the first of many more, and “the start of something much, much bigger!”

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From Ho Chi Minh to Hanover