By Natalie Scott
Bangor, ME- Students from the New England School of Communications are taking their knowledge outside of class. Students of the class CT 441, a video production workshop, are using their video skills to tell a story that many people are unaware of. Entangled Strangers tells the story of an unsolved murder. Mary Catherine Olenchuck disappeared on August 9th, in the year of 1970. She was last seen in the town of Ogunquit Maine. Students were asked to use their expertise to make this story come to live using high tech video and audio equipment were used by the students to capture all of the information they needed.
https://www.facebook.com/EntangledStrangers/photos/a.1053518078124949.1073741827.1051737364969687/1055983237878433/?type=1&theater
This story is such a big deal because of the amount of people who were involved in the scandal. It has been said that state police, military, FBI, the locals of Ogunquit, and family members were all on the look out for the missing person. The end result will be a documentary totally and completely made by the students. The students of CT 441 are making it their mission to make sure that this story is told. Instead of opening the investigation back up, they are retracing the steps of Olenchuck and the investigation team to create a documentary.
The class was taken to the exact spots where everything had taken place. They also used their skills to interview locals, and other people who were involved in the cold case. They use lighting kits, microphones, cameras, and more to capture everything they possibly can. Even though this may seem like a lot of work to someone who isn’t familiar with all of the camera gear that comes into play while creating a film, it’s nothing new to the crew. “We’re all pretty experienced on the crew. The project is made through the Workshop class which is comprised almost entirely of seniors so most of us have been using the equipment for 3 – 4 years at this point,” said Eric Roth, the director of the documentary.
Learning how to manage camera gear may not have been much of a worry to these students, but weather did play a part in the struggles of filming this story. Due to the filming being done in Maine, the snow and rain did create a slight delay while trying to film in a timely fashion. “The weather has been an issue because our story takes place in August 1970, so we’ve had to try and eliminate the look of summer while shooting in the winter,” said Roth.
https://www.facebook.com/EntangledStrangers/photos/a.1053518078124949.1073741827.1051737364969687/1055983237878433/?type=1&theater
Although they are on a time crunch, knowing some of the students involved will be graduating from the university this coming May, they are taking their time to make sure that they get everything that they need. “We feel humbled to tell this story and we are filming non-stop to ensure this story gets told the way we have envisioned it,” said the team of Entangled Strangers.
Entangled Strangers has a trailer, photos, as well as some clips of their documentary that show the progress that they are making as a team on their Facebook page titled, Entangled Strangers.
