Elizabeth C Shallenberger | College of Media

Second annual MACS Student Showcase

May 10, 2024

The second annual MACS Student Showcase on May 4, 2024, was a faculty-curated film screening featuring the work of students in media and cinema studies courses from Fall 2023 and Spring 2024—courses such as Smartphone Cinema to the Horror Film to Cinematography and Sound, and more. Faculty wanted students to have the chance to see their excellent work on a big screen and enjoy it with their friends and family!

Watch the program and see timestamps/credits below:

MACS 140: Smartphone Cinema

00:00:16 – Scene recreation from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994)
Jin Wang, Yue Wang, Qingyang Xia, Angela Ye, Ella Yoder, Mitchelle Zavala, Enxi Zhang, Yifan Zhao, and Yvonne Rose Smith

00:01:13 – Scene recreation from Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity (2002)
Felicity Abbott, Cameron Alagna, Jane Baer, Emily Bautista, Oscar Benavides, Britney Chen, Louis Dalpoas, Monzerrat Degollado-Hernandez, and Stephany Diaz Espino

MACS 150: Intro to Digital Media Production

00:02:48 – Choke
Marilyn MacLaren

00:10:04 – Innovative Illini
Anthony Mojica, Mikolaj Wierzbicki, Thomas Marousek, and Justin Martin

00:15:08 – The Dodger
Nolan Duquaine, Katie Farrell, Judi Georges, Ziyu Liu, and Paul Rampersaud

00:20:42 – Snack Run
Chen Chili, Akkhiel Nambbiar, and Jacob Tidrick

MACS 282: The Horror Film

00:25:50 – The Conjuring: A History of Lies
Adrien Reetz

MACS 260: Film Production

00:35:49 – Ebertfest 25th Anniversary Trailer
Bridget Nolan

00:37:30 – Inescapable
Anthony Mojica and Paige Gaines

00:44:06 – Ghostbluffers
Chen Chili, Anna Dobrzyn, Kinzie Parsons, and Armando Garcia

00:54:50 – The Inter-view
Izabella Kleinfeldt

00:59:13 – My Dear, Watson
Kris Modi and Aidan Allenfort

[30-Minute Intermission]

MACS 485: Making Video Essays

01:40:20 – A Moving Poem
Jose Figueroa Díaz

01:47:33 – Walking
Jorge Mercado

MACS 590: Essential Digital Production for Graduate Students

01:49:34 – Being There: A Videographic Essay about the Camera as Presence
Robbie Sieczkowski

MACS 370: Cinematography and Sound Design

01:55:18 – Excerpts from Deke Weaver and Jennifer Allen’s CETACEAN (The Whale)
Filmed by MACS 370 and broadcast on Illinois Public Media’s Prairie Fire

MACS 480: Advanced Filmmaking

02:05:40 – Surprise
Max Szykowny

02:44:48 – Campus Services
Akkhiel Nambbiar and Hannah Herndon
Original Script by Nathan Carlberg and Emily Watson

Jenny Oyallon-Koloski considers the power of movement in film in her first book: ‘Storytelling in Motion’

May 10, 2024 | Kelly Youngblood

Three vertical mirrors hang on the wall in the office of Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, assistant professor of media and cinema studies, where she keeps an open area that allows her the space to move.

As a certified movement analyst and director of the movement visualization (mv) lab, she wants the space to serve as a research environment where she can use motion-capturing technology to study the manifestations of human movement in cinematic space.

Her extensive research on how figure movement and dance create meaning in musical cinema is the subject of her first book, Storytelling in Motion: Cinematic Choreography and the Film Musical (Oxford University Press), which will be available May 17.

Oyallon-Koloski’s idea for the book came out of her dissertation project, which tied her interest in dance and movement into her core work in film and film history.

While her dissertation focused mainly on French filmmaker Jacques Demy, using his films as case studies, her book discusses broader ideas of how people can understand the significance of dance in film.

“That’s one of the core questions [in the book]—how do filmmakers use movement to tell stories, and specifically in the musical genre,” she said.

Her book also compares French and American film production histories and considers the impact of time, money, and rehearsal space available to filmmakers.

“What I found was really interesting between French and American musicals is Hollywood had a symbiotic relationship with Broadway, and those industries or artistic sectors kind of grew together. So there was all this culture around dance and musicals, at least in the Hollywood system. But in France, those artistic sectors were really separate,” she said.

That’s one of the core questions [in the book]—how do filmmakers use movement to tell stories, and specifically in the musical genre?

Jenny Oyallon-Koloski

Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies

Oyallon-Koloski discovered an interest in dance and movement in college. While doing her dissertation research, she became a certified movement analyst at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York, an educational and research center that trains people in the language of movement.

“I was taking dance classes, but I wasn’t getting a specific degree in dance and I really wanted to be able to have credibility with the dance community,” she said.

Oyallon-Koloski spent two years studying the Laban system—a method and language describing, visualizing, interpreting, and documenting human movement invented by Rudolf von Laban in the 1920s—alongside a wide range of students with interests in dance, therapy, academic research, and more.

Using never-before-published interviews with filmmakers and choreographers, she applies the principles from the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies to analyze the impact of figure movement in cinema.

Oyallon-Koloski also created three video essays to accompany her written chapters: Seeing Movement in Cinema: An Introduction to Laban Movement Analysis; Endless Conversations: Reflexive Musical Clusters; and Diegetic Flutters: Views from the bridge, which was accepted to the international Marienbad Film Festival to be held in the Czech Republic this June.

Movement visualizations — Visualizations of movement traceforms from the mv lab.

Making video essays is one of Oyallon-Koloski’s course specialties, as well as digital media production, contemporary movies, and cinema theory.

Although she doesn’t consider videographic criticism a substitute for writing, Oyallon-Koloski does believe audiovisual context is a way to help generate interest in films, particularly those people have rarely seen.

Oyallon-Koloski, a dual American-French citizen who speaks fluent French and lived in France her senior year of high school, says her familiarity with the culture enabled her to write a book about dance in French cinema, which some might consider a fringe topic.

After completing Storytelling in Motion, Oyallon-Koloski says she realized she still has more to say on the subject of French cinema.

“I think my next project will probably be about [Jacques] Demy and his filmography. He made about 13 films, so [the book would be] less focused on dance and movement and more film history and style,” she said. “I like working with archival collections … and I like the interplay between French cinema and international cinema.”

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Media alum, veteran CBS News reporter Rick Sallinger passes away

Rick Sallinger (BS ’71, MS ’72, advertising), a Peabody Award-winning veteran CBS News reporter, died on May 8, 2024. He was 74 years old.

After working as a radio reporter in Cleveland and Chicago, Sallinger moved on to television news working at stations in Indianapolis, Denver, and Chicago.

In 1990, Sallinger became a foreign war correspondent for CNN based in London covering events like the Gulf War, the war in Yugoslavia, and the reunification of Germany.

He settled in Colorado, joining KCNC-TV, a CBS affiliate in Denver, in 1993 where he worked until his retirement in December 2023.

Sallinger has covered nearly every major Colorado story in recent years including the Columbine High School shootings, the Oklahoma City bombing trials, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

In 2005, Sallinger won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for a series he did on Army recruiting. He was also inducted into the Illini Media Hall of Fame in 2022. Sallinger worked at the University of Illinois student-run radio station WPGU from 1967-71 as an announcer, music, and program director.

Sallinger was inducted into the Heartland Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle in 2023, which honors media professionals who have contributed 25 years or more to the television industry.

Watch a video from CBS Denver highlighting Sallinger’s career and NATAS honor.

Advertising students devise campaign to help boost tourism in rural southern Illinois counties

May 8, 2024 | Kelly Youngblood

Students in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising devised an ad campaign that launched this spring to help boost tourism for counties in southern Illinois.

The campaign was part of a class project in Advertising 400: Sandage Studios, taught last fall by Shachar Meron, senior lecturer in advertising.

“Our students were excited to research and promote southern Illinois as a great tourist destination, and to use the skills they’ve learned in the classroom to create real work with a real purpose,” Meron said.

The advertising campaign is part of the Create Bridges program, a statewide initiative to promote tourism in five southern Illinois counties and stimulate economic development in the region.

Students Kiara Vega, Joshua Witte, and Abby Kubatzke collaborated to create an ad campaign for Southernmost Illinois tourism bureau, promoting Shawnee National Forest as a top place to visit in Illinois.

They conducted market research and a brand audit, came up with a business strategy and media plan, and created the slogan “Adventure to the Most.”

Following the eight-week course, Vega and Witte (pictured at right) were hired to work as interns to bring the project to life.

Vega worked as an account and creative director, designing 16 ads that are running on Google from January through June 2024.

Vega said the experiential learning experience offered her a chance to see what working in an advertising agency entailed.

“It wasn’t just a class where I completed assignments and got a grade,” Vega said. “It was so much fun to work on this project and gain knowledge into the process of not only how an advertising agency works but into creating ads themselves.”

Witte also appreciated the real-world experience he gained from the class and internship. Part of his job was to research at least 10 social media influencers to post original content and to reshare their ad campaign. Three influencers were selected to engage between January and June 2024.

“This class’s sense of real work experience encouraged me to hit deadlines harder, care more about the content I was creating, and overall made me enjoy the work I was doing more,” Witte said. “It’s amazing to know that work you do in the classroom will have a bigger impact than just a grade, and [this course] allows one to fully understand this. This has been one of my favorite classes here at UIUC, and I’d recommend it to any advertising major looking for electives.” (Note: ADV 400: Sandage Studios has been renamed ADV 333: Agency Experience beginning Fall 2024.)

Meron and Susan Muirhead, experiential learning programs coordinator in the Sandage Department of Advertising, along with Key Light Consulting LLC and the marketing team at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, managed the social media influencers and all the ad buys.

They are also tracking engagement and collecting data to make sure metrics are recorded and shared with Southernmost Illinois.

Time will tell and data will show how the promotional effort will influence tourism and impact the local economy in the region, but they are optimistic their efforts will prove beneficial to downstate communities and to the Southernmost Illinois tourism bureau.

“The campaign the students created is on par with professional work in terms of strategic direction and creative execution,” Meron said. “I’m proud of the work they did.”

Media faculty and TAs make list of teachers ranked as excellent

May 8, 2024

Congratulations to all of the College of Media faculty and teaching assistants who were ranked as excellent by their students!

This list is based on Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms completed by students during the Fall 2023 semester. Only those instructors who distributed ICES forms at least once during this time period and who released their data for publication are included in the list. View the complete list.

Note: * denotes that the instructor ratings were outstanding.

ADVERTISING

KENT BROWN – ADV 314

STEVE HALL – ADV 150

* CHANG-DAE HAM – ADV 581

* JACQUELINE HITCHON – ADV 350

TERRY KASDAN – ADV 409

* EVA MASLOWSKA – ADV 580

* SHACHAR MERON – ADV 250, ADV 290, ADV 400

MICHELLE NELSON – ADV 550

SANG-HWA OH – ADV 587

* MARISA PEACOCK – ADV 498

AUGUST SCHIESS – ADV 491

PETER SHELDON – ADV 452

ALLISON VANCE – ADV 350

JOURNALISM

CHRISTOPHER BALL – JOUR 101, JOUR 451

* ALISON DAVIS – JOUR 215, JOUR 240

ALEXANDRE GONÇALVES – JOUR 102

* COLLEEN KING – JOUR 200

STEPHANIE CRAFT – JOUR 460

* VINCE LARA-CINISOMO – JOUR 210

CHARLES “STRETCH” LEDFORD – JOUR 215, JOUR 335

* CAROL LOMBARDI – JOUR 220

MEDIA

DANIEL ALMANZA – MEDIA 199

AMANDA MORLEY – MEDIA 100

MEDIA & CINEMA STUDIES

CL COLE – MACS 224, MACS 356

VICTOR FONT – MACS 140

JONATHAN KNIPP – MACS 101

RACHEL KUO – MACS 351

STRATEGIC BRAND COMMUNICATION

SHACHAR MERON – SBC 500

TEACHING ASSISTANTS

* P. BATISTE – ADV 250

N. FAISAL – ADV 150

* M. FUKADA – ADV 250

S. HEO – ADV 360

* S. PARK – ADV 250

* A. CANO – MACS 101

* T. CHEN – MACS 150

J. CINTRON – MACS 100

Y. GAO – MACS 101

Y. KANG – MACS 101

Q. LUAN – MACS 100

J. ROBINSON – MACS 101

N. ZHOU – MACS 100

College of Media apparel on sale through May 24

May 7, 2024

Show off your University of Illinois College of Media pride with branded apparel!

From May 7 through May 24, a College of Media apparel shop will be open with items to purchase including branded quarter-zip pullovers, polo shirts, sweatshirts, ball caps, and T-shirts.

The College of Media, the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, and the Institute of Communications Research all have apparel items available.

Orders will be ready to ship or pick up locally beginning Monday, June 10. Customers can select shipping via USPS Priority Mail, UPS Ground shipping, or USPS International Priority Mail. You can also select the option to pick up your order from Dixon Graphics at 312 S. Neil in Champaign (open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.), and will receive a notification when your order is ready.

To browse the shop, visit go.illinois.edu/media-store.

The shop will close at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, May 24.

Projects involving College of Media faculty, doctoral students receive funding from Chancellor’s Call to Action Research Program

May 6, 2024

Two faculty members in the College of Media were named recipients of the 2024-25 Chancellor’s Call to Action Research Program to address system bias and social injustice through cross-disciplinary research. This year, the program focuses on areas that span domestic, international, and transnational spaces.

Victor Font, a lecturer in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies, is collaborating on a project called “Co-creating Knowledge for Antiracist and Transnational Solidarities through Radical Practices of Care, Hope and Human Urbanisms.” His team will receive $99,560.

Anita Say Chan, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences and in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies, received $100,000 for a project she leads called “Activating a Peer-to-Peer Train the Trainers Network for Digital Equity Network in East Central Illinois: Advancing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Digital Navigation Programs.” Doctoral students at the College of Media’s Institute of Communications Research, Jorge Rojas Alvarez and Jiwon Oh, will also work on this initiative.

In its third year, the Chancellor’s Call to Action Research Program will distribute $1.2 million in funding to 11 research projects that support the vision of the University’s Campus-Community Compact to Accelerate Social Justice and partner with community organizations to solve and/or understand historical and current social injustices as they intersect with race.

Learn more about the College of Media-affiliated projects below. Read a full list of the projects funded for 2024-25.

Co-creating Knowledge for Antiracist and Transnational Solidarities through Radical Practices of Care, Hope, and Humane Urbanisms

This project aims co-create non-hierarchical learning spaces for our long-time collaborators, working across campus-community and social-spatial divides, to share social justice pedagogies and digital media methods as pathways for realizing antiracist, transnational solidarities we wish to forge across global color lines.

We build on decades-long relations of trust that faculty members at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have nurtured with academics and community groups in the U.S., South Africa, and Brazil to co-create knowledge about everyday practices of care and reciprocity that marginalized urban communities use to struggle beyond dominant divisive lines of race, gender, class, ethnicity and nationality. We refer to such ideals as humane urbanism, where life, not profit, is centered.

Using traditional action research along with emerging digital humanities methodologies, we host digital stories online through a multilingual multimedia website and host activist-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus to gather direct narratives and counter-narratives of urban activists, and uncover how concealed daily practices of radical care and reciprocity in marginalized communities nurture hope and activate imagination of an alternative just future.

The goal of this project facilitating knowledge co-production among academics and community-based organizers is to learn possible paths and pragmatic strategies toward shared ideals of transnational justice.

Project leaders include Faranak Miraftab, College of Fine and Applied Arts; Ken Salo, College of Fine and Applied Arts; Helen Neville, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Magdalena Novoa, College of Fine and Applied Arts; Victor Font, College of Media; Teresa Barnes, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Atyeh Ashtari University of Memphis; Ricardo Nascimento UNILABE, Brazil; Efadul Hug, Smith College; Sarah Bassett, Arizona State University; Koni Benson, University of Western Cape; Greg Ruiters, University of Western Cape; Clarissa Freitas, Federal University of Ceara; Jose Ricardo Vargas de Faria, Federal University of Paraná; Giselle Tanaka, Federal University of Rio de Janeiroc. Community Members: Rob Robinson, Partners for Dignity and Rights; Dawn Blackman, Randolph Street Community Garden; James Kilgore, First Followers; Ann Rasmus, University of YMCA.

Activating a Peer-to-Peer Train the Trainers Network for Digital Equity Network in East Central Illinois: Advancing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Digital Navigation Programs

The “Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Train-the-Trainers for Broadband Equity” Digital Navigators Program is a collaborative initiative jointly led by the Community Data Clinic at UIUC and the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (UC2B) non-profit to address persistent issues of Broadband and Digital Inequity in East Central Illinois EC-IL, particularly affecting historically marginalized and infrastructurally underserved populations.

Leveraging existing partnerships with five community organizations – the Housing Authority of Champaign County, Cunningham Township, Project Success of Vermilion County, Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and First Followers, this project aims to establish a Digital Navigators Network and seed a new EC-IL Broadband Equity Community Hub in Champaign Park District’s multi-purpose Martens Center.

The partnership network will support the development of a local Digital Navigators Program, training 36 new community-facing Digital Navigators, equipping them with new or refurbished laptops, and leveraging resources developed in two years of prior work around broadband equity education and programming with this network.

This project’s overarching goals will enhance affordable broadband adoption, empower community members with essential digital skills, and enhance access to community technology centers. By bringing together expertise from diverse organizations, the initiative seeks to bridge the digital divide and create opportunities for improved digital connectivity and inclusivity in EC-IL. This project was developed in alignment with and prior funding from the Illinois Office of Broadband’s Digital Equity + Inclusion Programming

In addition to Chan, project leaders include Tracy Smith, Technology Services; Paul Hixson, Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband Not-for-Profit; Julian Chin, School of Information Sciences; Jessica Black, Lead for America Fellowship Program. Doctoral students at the College of Media’s Institute of Communications Research, Jorge Rojas Alvarez and Jiwon Oh, will also work on this initiative.

Clifford Christians receives AEJMC’s Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award

May 3, 2024

Clifford Christians, research professor emeritus of communications, and professor emeritus of media studies and of journalism, will receive the 2024 Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award will be presented at AEJMC’s 107^th annual conference in Philadelphia this August.

“I am convinced that Dr. Christians should get credit for creating, leading, and developing the entire subfield of media and journalism ethics, not just in the United States, but in the world. At the least, without his work and his inspiration, media ethics would be entirely impoverished and thin,” said Linda Steiner (PhD ’79, ICR), editor of Journalism & Communication Monographs.

The Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award was created to recognize people who have devoted substantial parts of their careers to promoting research in mass communication, and those who have spent much of their professional lives to mentoring students in areas of research. It is named in honor of the first recipient, Eleanor Blum, a long-time communications librarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Christians (PhD ’74, ICR) is a former director of the Institute of Communications Research at the College of Media and chair of the doctoral program in communications, positions he held from 1987-2001 and from 2007-2009.

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students, and media professionals. AEJMC’s mission is to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to cultivate the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multi-cultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice and a better informed public.

Journalism alumna publishes article in ‘Newsweek’

Mary Lynch Snowdon (BS ’86, journalism) wrote an article that was published in Newsweek recently titled “My Talented Son Has Autism. As a Mother, I Feel Like a Dual Citizen.” In the article, Snowdon writes about her experience parenting her son with autism, who is now in his mid-20s and a talented golfer.

Snowdon is a lawyer, consultant, and advocate. She currently resides in Annapolis, Maryland.

Media students present at 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium

April 24, 2024

Update June 4, 2024: Congratulations to the students who presented “Exploring Period Poverty in Sierra Leone” (pictured below) for receiving an award for Outstanding Exhibit at the Undergraduate Research Symposium from the Office of Undergraduate Research! Learn more about their trip to Sierra Leone.

Students from the College of Media are participating in the annual University of Illinois Undergraduate Research Week, held April 21-27. The Undergraduate Research Symposium, the signature event held on April 24 at the Illini Union, features presentations, posters, and performances from students across campus.

Media student presentations include:

On Exhibit: Robots & Medical Technology
“Exploring Period Poverty in Sierra Leone”

Faith Lee, junior in journalism
Piper Pascarella, sophomore in journalism
Maggie Knutte, junior in journalism
Stephanie Wayda, senior in journalism
Nour Longi, junior, journalism
Elena Cleary, junior in agricultural communications (College of ACES)
Research Mentors: Alison Davis and Charles “Stretch” Ledford, Department of Journalism

CS Student Ambassadors/Research Scholars
Illinois Scholars Undergraduate Research Program Research Expo
“Comparing Human Generated Text with Machine Generated Text”
Garima Sharma, senior in CS + advertising

Poster Presentation: Social Science & Human Behavior
“Mental Health and Wellbeing Outcomes among Gender and Sexuality Diverse Individuals Raised in Fundamentalist Religious Environments: Exploratory Analyses and Study Design”
Marina Manuel, senior in media and cinema studies
Research Mentor(s): Chris Fraley and Maggie Palmiero, Department of Psychology (College of LAS)

Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, assistant professor of media and cinema studies, was the research mentor for Molly Pfeifer, senior in psychology (College of LAS) and cinema studies minor, who is presenting “Embracing Ambiguity in Low Concept Film Marketing” as part of the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences poster presentations.

View the Undergraduate Research Week program.