JHU Politik introduces new video medium

This weekend, the JHU Politik will be launching a new video series in addition to its regular online magazine.

The Politik is a weekly, student-run publication focused on political opinion writing. In conjunction with the Filmmaking Club, the Politik has been working since last semester to create an online show for Hopkins students to discuss politics in a round-table setting.

Senior Vicky Plestis wanted to bring a new element to the publication by adding the video format. Plestis was inspired by her summer job in the broadcast journalism industry.

“Working over the summer at CBS. . .I found a different medium, a different format in which you could relay the news but also get that sort of intensity or fast-paced quality to journalism that I’ve just never seen before,” Plestis said.

The show’s format will be a shorter parallel to the well-known formula of news broadcasts and talk shows.

“My initial vision was more of a round-table focus so the kind of things you see on the Sunday morning talk shows where you have an anchor. You have a little bit of a script at the top and it filters into what I hope will be a dynamic conversation between two, three, even four different people who have slightly different views or very different views,” Plestis said.

Each episode will feature a different topical discussion.

“My hope is that [each episode] will be about 10 minutes, most of which will just be discussion between the different guests we have, incorporating some one-on-one interviews with experts or professors or even people outside Hopkins if we can and maybe a bit of an editorial take from our anchors at the end,” Plestis said. “We filmed our pilot on Saturday. It was super exciting; we did it on Obama’s initiative to raise the federal minimum wage. So that will probably be out around Friday or into the weekend.”

Plestis and her crew are excited to bring this new video element to a campus where a growing number of students are passionate about politics and the news.

“This isn’t so much a project to increase awareness or to make Hopkins more politically active because it’s deficient in something; that’s not what I think,” Plestis said. “I think it’s just a great way to get people’s voices out there, to maybe be a little bit invigorated to know that they have the ability to be spokespeople and to reach out to different corners of journalistic mediums.”

In the same fashion as the Politik’s once a semester special editions — which cover broad topics such as revolution in the Middle East, food politics and research — Plestis hopes to create special episodes analyzing issues in Baltimore.

“We have someone on our staff who’s really passionate about Baltimore incarceration and rehabilitation and the deficiencies in that system, so she’s actually seeing if she can talk to people in the nonprofit world. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like yet, but I just think the idea that we have people and staff who are that passionate about things and are willing to go out and explore it is a good sign,” Plestis said.

Unable to navigate the technical aspects of this new format on her own, Plestis turned to the JHU Filmmaking Club for assistance.

“The Filmmaking Club is responsible for the video production aspects of the project, working to translate The Politik team’s editorial into an audiovisual format,” Filmmaking Club President Maxwell Dickey said. “During the bi-weekly production cycle, this involves facilitating any tapings and ultimately compiling raw media into a finished product.”

Plestis approached the Filmmaking Club early last semester with her idea for a video format. Without a proper news studio, the crew has been experimenting and will continue to play around with the format while the show is still in its early forms.

“The Politik team, of course, is most familiar with print media; audiovisual media is a significantly different sensory experience and requires a more rigorous and less forgiving process. This particular operation is also relatively large and complex, and the administrative hierarchy and technical skill it requires poses a challenge to The Filmmaking Club, which is now only entering its second year of official operation,” Dickey said.

The new format is primarily intended to empower Hopkins students, giving them an open space to discuss their political opinions and let their voice be heard.

“One of the things I wanted to do is to make sure it stayed true to Hopkins,” Plestis said. “We give Hopkins students that opportunity to actually hear their voice and know that other people are hearing it too.”