FAIRMONT — On Saturday, firefighters waited for their cue outside the Marion County Courthouse.
On Trinity Rollins’ orders, firefighters from the Fairmont Fire Department unleashed a jet of water into the air, which arced overhead and became individual droplets. The droplets caught in the setting sun, glowing gold before splashing on the heads of students from Shawna Santee’s 5th Street Center for Dance.
Drew Burns, camera operator, focused her lens on Santee’s students as they went through their routine. Burns moved and shifted with the action, while Marshall State University Professor Tijah Bumgarner assisted her by keeping an eye out for any potential trip hazards.
For roughly an hour, Rollins, 21, used the power of movie magic to recreate one of her younger experiences here in Fairmont. Rollins said her professor, Bumgarner, always tells her students to write what they know. So Rollins wrote about one memorable performance from 2021. Back then, Rollins was part of Santee’s dance studio.
“The 5th Street Center for Dance planned to march in the Christmas Parade in Fairmont,” Rollins said. “It ended up canceled literally at the last second because of an incoming storm. But our teacher Miss Shawna wasn’t having it. She said, ‘the show must go on.’ She brought us down to the courthouse and we put it together and danced for everybody waiting for a parade that never came.”
The production was part of a class requirement for Bumgarner’s class. The short film is named, “It’s only a Parade.” Rollins is a senior at Marshall and is due to graduate in December. As part of her capstone project, Rollins had to to pitch, plan and script a film project.
Capstone takes place over two semesters, with the first dedicated to preproduction, or everything done prior to filming, while the second semester is dedicated to post-production, or everything that needs to happen to turn raw footage into a finished product. Filming happens between semesters.
Burns, the camera operator, worked closely with Rollins to figure out how the project would be shot. Burns said learning what the director’s vision is was important to her job because then she’s not running shot content by Rollins to make sure it’s OK after every shoot.
Emotion isn’t just communicated by what’s in the camera frame either, it’s also communicated by how the camera moves.
“The whole entire film is supposed to be chaotic,” Burns, 21, said. “To show that chaos, we went handheld for a lot of it so we could have that shake and it didn’t look perfectly stationary the whole time. A lot of camera work is to know what the feeling of the film is supposed to emulate. So I have to figure out, am I on tripod? Handheld? Am I using a rig?”
The Fairmont community rallied around Rollins to help. The Fairmont City Fire Department, Fairmont City Police and West Virginia State Troopers all contributed in one form or another to the project. While the Fire Department provided the special effects, one Fairmont Police Officer had a starring role on camera. At the same time, police directed traffic around the courthouse to ensure filming could safely take place.
Santee used her connections to populate the mise en scene with extras and give the final product a lived-in feel. Rollins was grateful to everyone who showed up to help, from civil agencies to her former dance teacher, who she credited for helping put everything together.
For the uninitiated, mise en scene refers to stage design, arrangement of actors, and any other visual element that appears within the camera frame.
Watching her students put together a professional production out of scratch is one of her profession’s delights, Bumgarner said. While she was present, she did not direct or tell Rollins what to do, instead she let herself fill in wherever Rollins needed her. In this case, it meant making sure Burns didn’t step off of a curb or get hit by a car while filming. She also answered any questions the production team might have while working.
Rollins put her production together at the same time more opportunities for video and film production begin to pop up in West Virginia. Bumgarner said tax incentives for film production have returned at the state level. At the same time, Marshall University will launched the state’s first bachelor’s degree program in filmmaking in the fall.
While the school did have a video production program for the last six, almost seven, years, Bumgarner said an evaluation of what students needed and what they wanted led to the creation of the new program. The end goal is to produce the type of filmmakers the film industry needs for projects they bring to West Virginia.
“There’s a lot of small films that people don’t realize are — we’re getting quite a few coming into Huntington,” Bumgarner said. “There’s a crew coming in October, so they’re trying to hire some students. There’s some Hallmark movies coming, all of a sudden with tax incentives. I get a lot of requests for students that can shoot or edit.”
Bumgarner said there’s also homegrown production companies like 84 Agency and Image Associates in Charleston and Studio 291 in Huntington.
Rollins and Burns both have hopes of continuing on in the film industry. Rollins hopes to make music videos for local artists. Burns wants to go deeper into cinematography, first by attending grad school for the discipline and then working on small production jobs before moving up.
Rollins said Hollywood isn’t the only place to go for movie magic.
“There’s film everywhere,” she said. “Everyone needs advertising, everyone needs a video made, everyone needs help bringing their vision to life. I had never really realized that was true. Once someone explained that to me, I was like, ‘yeah, this could actually be something I do forever.’”
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