#bridgethink.org

[buzzardsbayfilmfestival]

Finding the Heart of It

Making videos for three of the most influential departments in a 9,000-student university is not easy, but Buzzards Bay Film Festival advisor Don Burton seems to have found the key.  Burton is in the midsts of a second season of UMD Stories, a video series for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s advancement/alumni, public relations and admissions departments. The videos profile students, faculty and alumni, all to boost fundraising and recruitment. Burton says he set out to “find what’s in the heart” of the onscreen subjects. “Whether it’s a student studying nursing or art, or a professor working in oceanography, there’s a passion and an honesty, and the best thing that we can do is to try and bring that out."   Burton graduated from UMD in 1997 with a sculpture degree but soon moved to LA to work in film. In 2003 he started collaborating with The Post Studio, a production company specializing in marketing for the entertainment industry. If you’ve ever seen a behind-the-scenes featurette on a DVD from Hollywood, there’s a chance The Post Studio made it. In April of 2010, Burton’s friend Jennifer Raxter, UMD’s Director of Annual Giving, asked him to help edit a two minute fund-raising video that she had made -- for free. "It was a way to give back. But that’s also something you do a lot of during any creative career,” Burton says, laughing. “There’s always an abundance of free work out there.” The favor paid off, though -- soon the school asked for a proposal for an expanded series.  Working with Raxter, Burton included all the departments’ major players while planning season season two. "They were really happy about being asked and being part of that process.” Burton and Raxter found their on-camera subjects through the school’s social media and from recommendations from faculty and staff. The videos are teamed with a blog written by students and alumni. The blog and videos create their own type of conversation, he says. Building dialogues seems to be in Burton’s DNA. In New Bedford in April, 2008, he made Homeland, a film about post-9/11 paranoia and our individual lives. In 2009, he premiered the film at “Building Bridges to the Homeland” an art and film festival at the city’s Zeiterion Theater that drew 600 people and dozens of cultural partners, sponsors and guests from both coasts. The festival launched BridgeThink.org, an initiative that sponsors events which connect creative communities. Burton has brought the same goal to the University videos: They’re designed so their subjects can speak with their true voices. “We chose them because of their sincerity, their honesty,” Burton says. “We should be invisible and that person should shine.”