Film studies senior David Zucker is an expert at both playing and filming Ultimate Frisbee. So he made a pitch to the Ultimate Peace, an Israeli summer camp where Jews and Arabs come together to play the game. The camp would get him to Israel, and he would create a promotional video.
Ultimate Peace had another idea; staffers asked him to shoot a documentary.
“They thought something interesting was really going on there,” Zucker says. “And there was. The program has always been apolitical and put aside people’s religious and geographical identities to emphasize that they could love each other as friends and teammates. But when I was there, some of the counselors-in-training started to confront some of their differences. There were some really tough conversations, and I was encouraged to be objective and capture it.”
Chronicling this complicated, human story really challenged Zucker. He’s a veteran at shooting Ultimate games, no easy feat given how fast Frisbees fly. But this was something new.
“I was thrust into the role of storyteller,” said Zucker. “I had to learn to trust my instincts and to be patient. The story emerges if you listen and are ready for things to happen.”
Zucker’s video about his experience won first place in the WUSTL Career Center summer internship video competition. Arts & Sciences sophomore Brian Benton won second place for his video about his internship shooting and editing at Butchershop Creative in San Francisco; biomedical engineering senior Morgan Adam Carlile won third place for his video documenting his work studying human performance centrifuge at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. In total, 22 students submitted videos about their summer internships. During the 2012–13 academic year, the career development team helped a record number of students prepare for internship and post-graduate opportunities.
“I think what struck us most was the passion they all had for their internships,” says Lauren Stapel, communications manager, Career Center. “It’s really rewarding for us in the Career Center to see all of the meaningful experiences our students are having across the globe.”
Zucker plans to use his $400 prize to rent a camera and hire a sound technician for his next project, an adaptation of the classic horror story, The Monkey’s Paw.
Diane Keaggy is director, Campus Life News.
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