THE
BEACON
I S S U E DAT E 9•12•17
VOLUME 14 NO. 1
BY THE STUDENTS, FOR THE STUDENTS
Foraging on Campus
By Ben Riggleman
Did you know that SMCC’s South Portland Campus is full of wild-growing edible plants? There’s ample foraging here. However, there are some safety concerns you should be aware of before you make campus flora a major part of your seasonal diet. This piece will first describe a variety of wild foods the author has enjoyed on campus, and then, rather awkwardly, tack on a health warning that he is still digesting. It is hoped that the reader will at least come away with more information about a little-known world at SMCC students’ fingertips. You’re probably seen the wild apples. They’re the most high-profile wild food. Perhaps the most well-known of the campus apple trees is not, strictly speaking, on campus; it’s the one on Benjamin W. Pickett Street, just past the smokers’ corner. Every student who has parked or walked under it at this time of year knows how prolific it is: you can hardly traverse the sidewalk without squishing its fruit. Fewer know just how tasty these apples are. They’re at least as sweet as your average store-bought Macintosh, and not any tougher. You can’t beat the Pickett Street tree for flavor or volume, but it’s by no means the only option. The author also recommends a tree just off the paved shoreway path behind the Computer Science and Engineering Center (CSEC), whose greener fruit is reminiscent of Granny Smith, and several trees near the CSEC parking lot. There are also several small cultivated apple trees between the Horticulture Building and the Baykeeper Building (which is owned by the Friends of Casco Bay). Horticulture department chair Cheryl Rich told the author
these trees are all free for the picking. One day while the author was photographing the trees near CSEC, he saw a man and a young girl picking up drop apples. They had a large wicker basket. The man shook the tree while the child, who looked to be about four, picked up and inspected individual apples with curiosity, occasionally plunking one in the basket when the mood struck. The man, who identified himself as Stephen, had borrowed a cider press from the Portland Tool Library. You can too, at no charge. The Portland Tool Library has more than one cider press, and as of this writing, several are available Left: a wild apple tree overlooking the Spring Point shore. Top right: Cultivated elderberries near the according to its website. Horticulture building. Bottom right: the author picking apples while climbing the Pickett Street apple tree. (However, please read to the end before you decide to make cider flesh from out around it. The leaves are oval couple weeks ago, the tree responsible was a from SMCC apples.) shaped and finely toothed on the edges. thing of wonder. Its fruit tasted like storeAbout as common as apple trees here on (You should look up any unfamiliar plant bought cherries — but nearly as sweet as campus, but less well known, is Prunus se- online or in a guidebook and familiarize honey. rotina, the wild black cherry or rum cherry. yourself with its characteristics before samThere are at least nine other cherry trees The fruit of this mid-sized tree is jet black pling it.) on the South Portland Campus or immewhen ripe, and tiny, with the bigger cherUnfortunately, all the black cherries diately outside it. They’re all worth trying, ries about the size of garbanzo beans. It around campus have dropped or shriv- although the author has found them to be can appears alone or in pendulous clusters eled by now. You can still see them on the less sweet and more bitter or astringent like on branching stems. There’s a proportion- ground; they carpet a certain section of wine. ally large, inedible pit in each fruit, so the path between security headquarters and the There is a small row of deliberately plantway to eat these cherries is to suck the juicy Campus Center parking lot. In its prime a Continuned on page 2
Boot Camp for Filmmakers
CNMS Student Matthew Perry on set of his film, “Drought.” By Max Lorber Most people will agree that the best way for a student to learn and grow as an artist and an individual is in the field working with experienced, professional men and women who can show them the way in which the real world operates. Some call it trial by fire: “When there’s a will, there’s a way.” Walking
into a studio or onto a film set, not knowing up from down, sky from rock, entrance from exit. But you give a motivated person a deadline and the equipment to get that deadline met, they will figure it out because they know if they do not, they are the one that suffers the consequence. This is the main reason why the Communications and New Media Boot Camp film program is so effective. Students are given six weeks to produce a narrative short at least 12 minutes long. And every summer roughly 12-16 CNMS students willing throw themselves to the wolves and create absolute magic. Students walk into the first class and are introduced to Huey Coleman and Corey Norman, both experienced filmmakers and professors at the CNMS program at SMCC. They sit in a roundtable-style production meeting and pitch film ideas. These ideas are voted on, a tally is taken, and groups are formed within roughly an hour. Some bring scripts they have already been working on, others bring treatments, and some just cough up ideas they make up on the spot. After the groups are formed based on the students’ interests and how they vote, the beautiful exercise of lofty artistic collabo-
ration combining with realistic practicality, otherwise known as pre-production, officially begins. The next two weeks are dedicated to this back-and-forth process: Scripts are ironed out, shooting schedules are set up, jobs are delegated, actors are found and auditioned, locations are secured, and the twoweek deadline must be met or the students will not receive 3 out of the 9 credits. It is not uncommon for students to work eight to ten hours a day to get the job done. Then production begins. Mistakes and miscalculations are inevitable, of course, but this is how students learn. Adjustments are made on the fly, locations are switched, actors are replaced, scenes are cut and rewritten. Again, that two-week deadline is absolute. Principal shots and scenes must be executed or the students will not receive credit for this portion of the Boot Camp program. Group bonds and friendships are often tested under such pressure, but oftentimes relationships become stronger through this harrowing grind, and lifelong friendships and collaborative partners are formed. The last two weeks are dedicated to post-production. This is when the film is edited, the sound is mixed, and the soundtrack
is selected. Adobe Premier is the program used for the above mentioned tasks, but many students have never used it before. They learn trial-by-fire style, with a strict deadline looming. In the end, the films are screened at the Boot Camp Gala event in the South Portland Campus’s Hildreth building. Students, professors, parents and friends pack into the room to watch the films, and the Boot Camp crews stand up for a Q&A after their film has been screened. This past summer the films “Drought,” “Bullpen” and “Emergence” all met the post-production deadline, were screened on schedule, and received strong applause and enthusiastic questions from the audience. If you are reading this and wondering if you would ever be able to create a film — maybe you even have some ideas rattling around up there or have something already put down on paper — remember you go to school at SMCC, a school that employs professors that have been or currently are professionals in the field, and that dream has the potential to become a reality. Like anything else, it just takes a little guts and a lot of hard work.