Zahm vs. Plow

One of the greatest things about Ohio University's School of Media Arts is their willingness and eagerness to include the current students and alumni to be an active part of making the college the absolute best for the students there.  Last Tuesday and Thursday, I was fortunate to have two professors who really wanted their student's input on two candidates in the running to be a professor for a video production class, and was able to make it to both presentations that the candidates had.  The outline for each presentation was for the candidates to show off recent works that they have done, pertaining to video production, and then provide an hour of lecture material in order for their teaching styles to be evaluated.

On Tuesday, I saw Brian Zahm.  He introduced some of his experimental films, like 'Juice,' 'Wiggah,' and 'Headspace' and I was captivated by how visual his work is.  He went through what he has been working on the past six months and it was very impressive.  He is obviously a very hard working individual who takes advantage of every opportunity that comes his way.  His working mentality is very meticulous.  He has hundreds of drafts and countless layers when he works on a project.  His attention to detail would be an incredible assest for students to learn from.  He's very open with working with students outside the classroom for a better learning experience.  I could only stay for 20 minutes of his lecture, but he didn't seem as comfortable lecturing as he did about talking about what he has been working on. He used a lot of fillers ("um," "yeah," "so,"etc) and that made him seem unsure about how to address his audience on the subject on hand.

On Thursday, I saw Brian Plow.  His artistic style is so completely different from Zahm's.  He focuses on non-fiction films and documentaries.  All of his works have significant meaning to him and the communities that he grew up in.  'Home' was a documentary about building a stadium in Baltimore and how it impacted the community.  He lives in the Baltimore area.  'Day in the Sun' highlighted the lives of various artists in the community that he grew up in.  'Project PLASE' is a documentary filmed by individual homeless people near Towson University, documenting how they live their lives.  Plow's lecture was incredibly engaging.  He has incredible knowledge of the brain, body, and the psychology between the two, and also with history, literature and art that all apply to video production and getting your work to evoke a response from the audience.  Plow was very well spoken and used hands on applications of the material he was teaching.

All in all, I felt like Zahm would be able to teach us innovative techniques of the trade and would train our minds how to see the imperfections and make our work perfect.  Plow would be able to teach us the fundamentals from the ground up in order to prepare students to go their own way and learn their own, new techniques.  The reason I would choose Plow over Zahm is because, to me, video production is something that I would be able to use to better the world, and Plow would be able to teach me how I can use my video skills to help enhance my community and the people in it, whereas Zahm is self-motivated.