Anna Sule ’22

POE: Digital Media Production

As a digital media production POE, Anna spent many semesters at Juniata analyzing mass media and communication. She took courses to refine her skills in media production such as Video Production I and II, Integrated Media Arts Practicum, and Video Production for Social Media. Furthermore, she also took courses to refine her skills in media analysis and critical theory, such as Entertainment Industry Strategies, Media Analysis, Writing for Video Production, Constructing Identities, and Digital Storytelling. With this knowledge under her belt, she is completing her senior capstone project in Integrated Media Arts, that combines both critical media analysis with media production.

For her senior capstone project, she furthers this analysis by researching and designing with a topic that is critically important in the media production realm. With this project, she explores the shift from long-form to short-form video in mass media such as social media and entertainment.

Anna explores the shift from the wide-spread consumption of long-form video, such as movies and YouTube videos, to short-form video, such as episodic limited series and short social media video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels and Stories. For this reason, she is creating a limited episodic series instead of a short film for her senior capstone project.

The essential question that Anna explores through her research project is: what does a cinematic limited series look like from the female perspective, instead of the traditional heterosexual male perspective? This project will symbolically represent the tragedy of femininity in a masculine world.

Anna draws inspiration from movies by Director Sofia Coppola. Coppola captures the tragedy of femininity in the masculine world in her worlds such as the Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette. Further, she explores the female experience through the lens of the female gaze, by creating a main character who identifies as a woman, telling a story from her point of view, and calling into question the patriarchal order. Furthermore, through her story she consciously steers away from objectification and eroticization and leans more into an emotional and intimate experience, while discussing how women feel about being perceived.