Matt Cikovic: Lights, Camera, Fandom
Dr. Matt Cikovic made his way to the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication all the way from his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. Armed with an acute knowledge of video production, filmmaking, and fan culture, Cikovic shares how he went from “reel” to “real,” transforming his amateur interests into academic expertise.
What are your areas of specialty? How did you become interested in what you study and teach?
I study fandom and fan filmmaking. It happened pretty automatically as I began in video and film production at a young age making silly fan films with my friends on a positively ancient VHS camera. In a lot of ways, I was always meant for this.
What courses are you currently teaching or looking forward to teaching soon? What's special about them?
I'm teaching a class on multimedia storytelling, visual communication studies, and social media production. I'm most excited for the social media production class this semester since our students seem to be pretty excited about growing in their capability to use and understand a media form they use every day.
What are some takeaways students will get from your courses?
I really emphasize critique in my production classes. I want them to be tough and smart about their work. Being able to sit a critique from their peers and grow in their capability based off of that feedback is incredibly important in production.
What projects are you working on right now?
Right now I'm exploring turning my dissertation into a book or a publication. There's been a lot of recent drama in the fandom/fan film Star Wars communities about who gets to call themselves "a fan" and I think what I wrote would be very timely for this moment.
This story was edited by an undergraduate student in CLA.
