Bronx River Ecomedia Blog

This documentary is the final project of a course which explored a range of professional broadcast journalism production and post-production techniques. Students learned how to make a documentary video from conception and script development to field shooting, editing and completion. The course focused on instilling hands-on field production experience, including hand-held camera work, interview preparation and sound recording with professional microphones. Students utilized their newly acquired documentary filmmaking skills to create, as a group, to edit a short broadcast piece with Final Cut Pro on the ecological makeup of the Bronx River, its treatment and its relationship to the members of the local Bronx Community. In addition to capturing documentation of the ecological workshop, and conducting interviews with select ecological educators, students also wrote a script and did a re-enactment teaching viewers about good and bad habits, which affect the environment.

Instructor: Marianna Ellenberg

Students: Ester Ford, Stuart Gardiner, Luz Polo, Adam Rodriguez

Portions of a lecture by Professor Joe Rachlin on fish in the Bronx River and sounds along the river were recorded by students in a Bronx River Art Center class taught by Ricardo Arias. To hear them, click “Bronx River Sound Environment, Fall 2006.”

From the beginning, Olivia Metellus, 9, and Nia Brown, 12 enjoyed taking pictures with digital cameras during photography classes for children and parent teams. More difficult was learning to edit them on Macintosh computers.

The class, sponsored by the Bronx River Art Center, challenged the parent/child teams to take interesting microphotographs of natural subjects, zooming in on flowers, parts of trees, and waterfalls, for example. The idea was to bring the teams into their natural surroundings close up. BRAC provided the cameras and an engaging teacher, Marisol Diaz.

Nia liked taking nature pictures because they are beautiful and because “we’re in nature, and if we don’t have nature we don’t have anything all.” She didn’t like doing the close-ups at first, though. She had to exchange the Olympus camera she loved for a Nikon, and she had to exclude from her pictures aspects that interested her. But her teacher, Marisol Diaz, explained that professional photographers have to focus on whatever subject is assigned to them, and Nia liked being professional about her work. She’s really good at it, and it’s her best way of being creative, she thought.

The first weeks of the class were spent learning to use the cameras and uploading and filing their pictures into the computers. They also talked about elements of composition. In the next weeks, they learned to sharpen and size the pictures on Macintoshes using Adobe Photoshop.

Selecting which pictures to edit was hard for Olivia because all were “so good.” She had to pick 10 or so to show on Dec. 15 for a special exhibition at BRAC.

The exhibit will include the work of this class along with that of the documentary and computer games classes for teen-agers, and the adult class making this blog. Olivia’s favorite pictures were of a raindrop of water on a flower and a pine tree.

Nia, called “the brain” by Marisol because she remembers everything she is told about using the cameras and computer, said she tried to tell a story with her pictures. Her favorites were of a waterfall and of a red rose she saw near an old house.

Both Olivia and Nia were full of enthusiasm for the class and for their teacher. Nia said that besides taking the photographs she enjoyed learning all about the river and about the garden where they took many pictures. In addition, Marisol was “the best teacher you could have. She’s funny, and she tells you everything.” Olivia said the class was not only fun but also a way for mothers and daughters to spend “quality time” together.

The children will receive prints of selected pictures at the exhibition and ceremony December 15.

All are invited to this event at the Bronx River Art Center, 1087 E. Tremont Ave. from 4 pm to 7 pm.

Picture 4

Originally uploaded by Citizen Journalism_ecomedia.

Students from all the EcoMedia classes will be showing their work at a Holiday Party and Benefit Sale.

We will be uploading pictures in real-time from the party using camera phones.

Take a picture during the party and send it to this email:

late24add@photos.flickr.com

When he was a child, Professor Joe Rachlin fished for carp in the Bronx River with his friends, then ran to a nearby fish market where he sold them for 25 cents apiece. He believes fishing taught him to love the river and the creatures that live in it, and he wants you to go fishing, too – after snipping the barb off your hook so you can easily remove it from the fish’s mouth and return it to its home. In 2006, the idea is to enjoy being outdoors and fishing, but to conserve, rather than serve up, the fish.

On Nov. 18, Professor Rachlin, who nowadays teaches at Lehman College, gave a workshop on fish in the river as part of the Bronx River Art Center fall program. He explained to the children and adults present how to identify fish by the number and shape of their fins and talked about the importance of the river, which contains both fresh and saltwater fish. Since the lower part is a tidal estuary, it is a nursery for many fish that live in the ocean but come here to lay their eggs for a new generation. Just think: Considering recent reports that the oceans will be fished out in coming decades if present rates continue, keeping our Bronx River nursery healthy could help to restore the health of the entire western Atlantic coastal zone!

Professor Rachlin provided a key for identifying around 20 fish that can be found in the river and about 30 invertebrates like the scuds and mollusks that children collected in their nets at last month’s workshop on creatures that live in the river. He mentioned that the American eel, a fish that was also captured last month, has a history unlike most other fish that spend time in the ocean. It spawns in the Atlantic, in the Sargasso Sea, and the newborn young migrate back to coastal river systems, including the Bronx River, to grow up. It arrives as a small, transparent glass eel, grows into a brownish elver, then lives happily in the river for 12 years before returning to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.

Right now, after many years of work by Bronx River restoration groups, the river is pretty healthy and stable, he said. The Clean Water Act of the 1970s made a big difference, and people don’t dump so much junk into it any more, although some garbage, especially soda bottles, finds its way there. Automobile oil washed off the streets is also a problem, along with raw sewage washed into it after a heavy rain.

Nevertheless, a study Professor Rachlin has been conducting comparing surveys of fish that were found in the river as far back as 1936 with fish found there today shows that only two species are missing.

A student in a Bronx River Art Center class on documentary-making, 13-year-old Adam Rodriguez, interviewed Professor Rachlin after his presentation. You can see part of the interview by clicking on YouTube above.