Are We [Rock n’] Rolling? How I Overcame My Fear of STEM for The Art Show

“We like to tell students that they’re the softest thing in this room.”

We’re in the thick of shooting b-roll at the Sinclair Community College STEM Guitar Lab, surrounded on all sides by machinery integral to the guitar making process. James O’Rear is explaining the importance of lab safety when a (small) piece of wood launches itself squarely at my chin.

The incident drove the point home and, much to my relief, no splinters into my skin. I’m thankful for that bit of safety information James manages to convey over the roar of the nearby CNC machine. I’m wearing eye protection and earplugs, as is videographer Joshua Beyersdoerfer, but I’m particularly worried about Josh, who’s placed the camera squarely in front of the sawdust mess. Suddenly, I feel a little guilty about asking him to get a shot of the googly-eyes glued to the equipment. As adorable as the shot is, it isn’t worth risking life and/or limb!

I happen to be a classic rock person all the way. Sift through my cassettes, CDs and playlists, and you’ll see that my main listening is pre-1990s rock n’ roll. I also happen to be the least STEM-oriented person I know. So when producer Ann Rotolante passed the production torch to me for the segment, I knew that I’d need to dust off my left brain for this one.

There were a lot of decidedly STEM factors to take in stride for this shoot – physics concepts, engineering principles, various types of machinery. While I didn’t need to become an expert in these in order to produce this segment (thank goodness), I did need to understand where they come into play when it comes to teaching STEM topics through electric guitar building via the STEM Guitar Project.

While I participated in every interview, I wasn’t present for a majority of the B-roll shoots. Audio engineer John Papp and videographers Richard Nordstrom and Josh Beyersdoerfer spent five days at the STEM Guitar teacher training at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. They captured every phase of the process, from participants picking out guitar bodies to tuning the final products.

Although they shot the process chronologically, I was still tasked with figuring out what exactly was going on in each step when I reviewed the footage. I had to select the best shots and use the correct vocabulary; “that metal thing” can mean many things in guitar building and I wanted the right terminology for the sake of my B-roll catalogue.The Google search engine probably thinks I’m pathetic (“What is the t-shaped tuning thingy for a guitar called?”).

Yet fate cared nothing for all of my left brain flexing. Toward the end of production, further interviews and B-roll shoots were delayed due to woodshop equipment breaking, illness and particularly gusty wind. I learned that in these scenarios, as a producer, sometimes you need to know when to just call it. Production staff functions on deadlines, and each of us, from videographer to editor, has our schedules plotted out far in advance. As a producer, however, you’re in charge of fostering the best environments for your crew and subjects; foresight is important, flexibility – and communication – even more so. Sometimes that means being prepared to pick the next best day to shoot when things don’t work out.

That said, by the time I made it to the woodshop at Sinclair’s Eaker Street Facility for a day of filming, I was bracing myself for whatever else the universe decided to throw at us.

But the universe was no match for the considerate woodshop team.

We had many audio considerations that went beyond the science of acoustics. We filmed some interviews in a Sinclair conference room, which we glammed up with colored lights. With it being a college, we naturally had occasional background noises (just because we’re in production doesn’t mean we have a monopoly on public spaces!).

The Eaker Street facility, with its myriad of machinery, presented even more challenges. When conducting interviews in the space, we had to account for a constant hum in the background. Fortunately, editor Mike Schwartz and audio engineer Gabe Wimberly were able to clean it up, but sometimes there’s no telling how things will work out until you’re in the editing suite. “We’ll just fix it in post” is never a total given.

I also learned to be careful about what you wear in a woodshop – my dark blue jumpsuit was caked in sawdust by the end of the day. I walked away with neither splinter nor grave injury, but I guess the wood, in a sense, got me in the end.

When I finally made it to the editing suite, I was glad I spent the time learning guitar terminology. Editor Mike Schwartz happens to be a guitar player so he gave me some pop quizzes on the parts that we included in our B-roll. But thanks to my research, I was ready – hello, headstock!

Listening to footage of teachers playing their final products at the end of the training (audio of which we couldn’t include for copyright reasons) made me want to drop everything and blast Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. But I learned that this segment isn’t entirely about the infectious music or the intricate guitar building process. It’s about using a creative, novel means for tangible learning that lasts a lifetime (and remembering that your cubicle neighbors don’t necessarily have the same taste in music as you).

Party on, dudes.

Nadya Ellerhorst
CET and Think^TV Producer