Ithaca College

Park Productions was recently awarded a BEA “Best of Festival” King Foundation Award in the Student Documentary Competition.  Park Productions’ film, Water in the Cloud Forest, was among the 17 out of 1,300 student and faculty submissions chosen to receive a “Best of Festival” award.  Previously Water in the Cloud Forest won first place from The Smithsonian in Motion video contest in the natural world category.   

Park Productions students traveled to Intag, Ecuador in the winter of 2014 to work in collaboration with local farmers, community organizers and educators to create the award-winning Water in the Cloud Forest.  The film explores the vast biodiversity of the Intag region, and the potential contamination of this unique watershed from pesticides, mining, and destructive agriculture. The Park Productions creative team consisted of cinematographer Jackson Eagan, editor Daniel Masciari, graphic designer Zachary Briggs, and sound designer Lucas Knapp.  Park Media Lab director Carol Jennings supervised the team.  See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbo_LKpQ-iU

Students from Park Productions returned to Ecuador this winter to screen Water in the Cloud Forest for community partners and to create a second documentary.  The new video focuses primarily on shade grown coffee production as seen through the eyes of coffee growers and members of an agricultural cooperative devoted to sustainable farming.  The film is currently in post production. The students involved in the project at present are Jacob Beil, Daniel Masciari Alyssa Berdie, and Thomas Whitney.  

Both projects were supported by a grant from the John Keshishoglou Center for Global Communications Innovation.