By Carolyn Steinle
Campus News Reporter

Professional documentary filmmakers Alicia Dwyer and Michael Dwyer’s drive to democratize the press will bring them to a UC Santa Cruz student workshop called “Who Makes Media?”

Students who attend the free workshop on Saturday will not find themselves at a long lecture. Instead, they will learn tips in a highly interactive environment by observing the Dwyers. Students will see a film crew make a short documentary and will explore all of the production steps, from filming to interviewing to editing.

“We made this workshop interactive, so that people can get a sense of what it is like to make a short video,” Alicia said. “[The film crew] will just be able to explain the process as we go along. So students will know how to make a well-done short video.”

Alicia worked on the Academy Award-winning documentary “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.” Her brother Michael is a cinematographer who recently worked on a piece with Kanye West.

The two of them will work with UCSC third-year Dayana Stockdale and UCSC alumna Katie Roper to create an interactive workshop for students who want to learn the basics of filmmaking.

Stockdale, Roper and the Dwyers want students to use the skills they learn in the workshop to address global justice issues. With these media tools, Roper hopes that students will be able to create awareness of issues that they find important.

“My experience working with a film team and talking to people about their experiences, and therefore giving a voice to those people through video, and having their voice heard by others to cause awareness, just really grabbed me,” Roper said.

Roper and Stockdale, neither of whom is majoring in film, see these video workshops as vital for other students who are not studying film, yet are interested in the subject nonetheless.

“I feel that classes here focus a lot on content, and I feel that students don’t get enough practical technical information,” Stockdale said. “So we wanted to create a workshop for students who are not necessarily filmmakers to posses the power of media.”

The videos that students will be making may be small, but Alicia Dwyer believes that they have the potential to still be influential with the power of media.

“Students can tackle anything as big as global justice with small video projects, because through information media you are telling the bigger story,” she said.

_The workshop, free for students, will take place at the College Nine community room from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. _