A new course offered by the University of Cincinnati takes students out of the classroom and into the wild world of adventure racing.
Since 2012, an interdisciplinary group of senior students have had the chance to earn credits while creating a documentary about the Gold Rush Expedition Race. The Post Production Master Course students create a documentary about the race to learn “the nature of cross-disciplinary collaborations that are involved in the production of contemporary national television programming,” according to a course description.
Under the direction of professor Kevin Burke and producer Brian Leitten, students go on location to film the grueling race, which is a multi-day event held each year in California.
The class breaks into small groups and follows teams as they trek, mountain bike, navigate, paddle, and rappel cliffs in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The four-day race was brutal for racers and students, Leitten said. (He slept only a few hours during the entire four days.)
With the resulting footage, the class of 33 students created a 65-minute documentary. The film will air in March of 2014. Check out the teaser below.
Nine students filmed the race for a second time last month. That version of the Gold Rush film goes into editing now.
You can follow the class’ progress on its Facebook page, called UC GRML 2013.
—Amy Oberbroeckling is assistant editor at GearJunkie.com.
