Graduate film students find way to Sesame Street
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?
It’s a question that children across the country and around the world have pondered for nearly 50 years.
It’s a question that Steve Feldman can answer with authority.
Feldman, adjunct professor of film in Lipscomb’s College of Entertainment & the Arts and an Emmy award-winning director with more than 20 years’ experience in children’s programming including directing and producing for Sesame Street, gave his graduate students a unique opportunity to work with Muppet superstars Elmo and Rosita on the popular program this last fall as part of a special project.
Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, which has been a television staple for children in more than 150 countries for generations. Its mission is “to help kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder.” In addition to providing educational programming, the show also tries to help children and their families navigate challenging life situations such as death, bullying, divorce and tough financial times among other key topics.
Recently, Sesame Workshop developed a series of programming and resources to assist military families in transition.
“More than 8,000 children under the age of six have at least one parent who is deployed,” said Philip Toscano, communications director for Sesame Workshop. “So we developed this series with simple messaging to support military families and the issues that impact them such as helping kids cope with having a parent who is deployed, teaching parents how to parent when they’re deployed, homecomings and dealing with grief.
“With a number of our military are coming home, we saw the need to help them make the transition from military to civilian life,” he continues. “In that episode we took a look at the issues using Muppets and real people talking about these topics and scenarios in a way that kids can relate to. We developed videos, conversation starters and other resources to help families walk through this journey. Our goal is to help kids see every new adventure as a learning experience and to reinforce the idea that they are still okay and important even when things change.”
When Feldman was tapped to produce “Sesame Street for Military Families: Transitions,” it was an ideal coming together of his passion for and experience in children’s programming and his new-found love of teaching future generations of filmmakers, producers and directors through his faculty appointment at Lipscomb.
“I was touched and proud to be asked to be a part of this project,” said Feldman. “For me this was a defining moment. This experience that I was able to give my students this experience in just my third semester on faculty … I just had no idea that they would be able to be a part of a project like this so soon. Our students just jumped in, did what they could and got some great experience along the way. This was a total Lipscomb joyfest!”
Feldman says the Sesame Workshop team was impressed with the skill and quality of the Lipscomb film students who were part of the project. Lipscomb’s veterans services office also played a key role.
“Lipscomb has such a great program for veterans here, so this was an ideal opportunity to collaborate with our student veterans and to get their perspective on this aspect of military life,” said Feldman. “We were fortunate to be able to tap into that knowledge as a powerful resource.”
Feldman met Susan Lee, VA certifying official at Lipscomb. She quickly became a key player in the project.
“Susan knows veterans and was such an important part of this project,” he said. “With her background and her work with veterans at Lipscomb every day, she knows first-hand the challenges facing these individuals and their families. Susan was co-producer for the project, giving valuable input, coordinating casting, setting up meetings and more. She was key to the success of filming this piece.”
Lee helped identify children of veterans who had recently transitioned from military to civilian life to be interviewed for the program. The families of several of Lipscomb’s student veterans and alumni, including Zack Bell, Moses Arinzechi and April Herrington, and their children were interviewed during production.
The “Sesame Street for Military Families: Transitions” episode was filmed last fall in Nashville’s Sevier Park, about a mile north of the Lipscomb campus, and featured veterans and their families along with popular Sesame Street icons Elmo and Rosita.
“It was interesting to see the kids’ perspective on this often challenging situation,” said Lee, who has a degree in psychology and has a particular interest in issues kids grapple with such as major transitions in life. “Often the kids get lost in the shuffle. One of the benefits of a series that focuses on the unique challenges our military families face is to create an awareness of what our veterans and their families are going through at home.”
Lipscomb’s graduate film students contributed significantly to the production and gained hands-on experience in the planning process and on set. They also had an opportunity to learn from Feldman’s vast experience in the industry.
“Having faculty like Steve who has been a professional in the entertainment and art fields is such a valuable resource for us in the College of Entertainment & the Arts. It’s important that we capture this expertise and use it in innovative and flexible ways in our curriculum, our artist-in-residence program and faculty appointments,” said Mike Fernandez, dean of the college.
“Steve is at the top of his craft and a leader in the industry,” he continued. “We are creating a portfolio of faculty in an innovative learning environment where our students are not just learning from them but also working with them. The Sesame Street Transitions program is just one of the many examples of the real-time experience our students are getting here.”
Feldman’s work on “Sesame Street” earned him an Emmy Award and six Emmy nominations, while his work with “Barney and Friends,” “The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss,” “The Nick News” and “The Christopher Lowell Show” contributed to six additional Emmy Awards and nominations. He has produced work for PBS, CBS, Disney, Nickelodeon, 
Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, MSNBC and Discovery among others. Other credits include “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” “Lazy Town” and “Out of the Box” (Disney Channel). He recently completed work on a tablet-based television series for pre-school children, “Charlie and Company” and produced video content and provided design supervision for “nowdebatethis.com.” He also owns the Sam Hill Group, a production company based in Nashville.
In addition to Lipscomb’s student veterans helping with the Sesame Workshop project, several College of Entertainment & the Arts students played key roles in the production as well.
Graduate film student Josh Link served as second assistant cameraman on the studio shoot with Elmo, Rosita, and the kids and edited some of the studio segments. The primary focus of his work with Feldman was on the Military Parent Moments and the Tenley mini-documentary, produced in New York. Link shot and edited those four videos.
“Getting to work with Sesame Street was a pretty surreal experience. There was the initial studio shoot, and there’s this moment where you’re holding the slate in front of Elmo's face and you're like, ‘What is happening right now? That is Elmo. People have been trampled buying a Tickle Me Elmo doll on Black Friday and here I am calling out scenes and shots next to him. How cool is this?’” said Link, who is also the recruiting and marketing coordinator for the College of Entertainment & the Arts.
“Moving on from the shock-and-awe factor of working with Elmo in the studio to then finding myself in a working relationship with the Sesame Street team up in New York became a bit surreal as well. All of the sudden I’m getting notes on an edit, and at the bottom of the notes is someone’s email signature with the Sesame Street logo attached to it. Crazy. One of the biggest things I learned was just how to work with a bigger company and how to operate within their system, which was pretty rewarding.”
Christy Sasi, a graduate film student who will complete her studies at Lipscomb in December, has an undergraduate degree in animation from Picasso Animation College located in her hometown of New Delhi, India. Sasi said she came to the United States to work on her master’s degree at Lipscomb because of its location in Nashville.
“I realized that a lot of work happens in Nashville,” she recalled. “God definitely brought me to Lipscomb It’s been a great experience, and I’m very happy to be in a Christian environment.”
Sasi, who worked for a Christian advertising agency in India, says programs like Veggie Tales and Sesame Street were very interesting to her. She says she first saw Sesame Street when she was in the eighth grade when an Indian version was launched.
Her role with the Military Transitions program literally began on the drawing board as she worked on the music video segment with Feldman. She also was a production assistant on the set and helped with the music playback process during the shoot.
What particularly stood out to Sasi was Feldman’s skill working with young children who were part of the film shoot.
“It was interesting to see how the characters Elmo and Rosita were designed particularly for the young audience,” she said. “Steve was so patient with the children on set and made them feel very comfortable. I learned so many small but important lessons about how to interact with kids on a set so that they will be at their best during the shoot. It was really an eye-opener for me.”
Spencer Glover, who works in the industry in Franklin, Tennessee, is pursuing his master’s degree in graduate film studies with a focus on screenwriting and directing. He had the opportunity to work as an assistant director for the Sesame Street project.
“Sesame is a well-oiled machine having been around for so long,” says Glover, who received his undergraduate degree at Tennessee State University. “It was an amazing experience getting to be a part of this. I watched Sesame Street as a kid. Now, getting to work on it as an adult was amazing. Getting to see the smiles on the kids’ faces was incredible. The Sesame team put so much effort into producing the show. It was very interesting getting to watch the crew work and the magic happen.”
Glover says the hands-on experience that’s part of Lipscomb’s program has been very beneficial.
“The experience at Lipscomb has been great. I wanted to get a master’s degree to enhance my writing skills. Lipscomb’s program has provided me an opportunity to get real-world experience,” he said. “Having an opportunity to work on Sesame Street was a big deal.”
“Sesame Street for Military Families: Transitions” was released earlier this year. Resources are found at www.sesamestreetformilitaryfamilies.org. For more information about the College of Entertainment & the Arts, visit cea.lipscomb.edu.