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A unique partnership between a Middle Tennessee State University film production class and Common John Brewing Co. gave a collection of students the chance get into the real world to shoot a promotional documentary-style video at the local business.

Professor Paul Chilsen created the class Reel World to give students a chance to take their filmmaking skills out of the classroom to create professional projects that get seen in the real world.

“It’s also something that they get to develop – something done professionally and cleanly that they get to use for their professional reel,” Chilsen said.

“The idea is under an umbrella of community engagement, it gets students out to be able to find clients, work with them and to be able to understand that relationship,” he said.

The videos are what Chilsen calls corporate image documentary filmmaking.

“You’re working with an entity that’s doing something that’s outside their norm,” he said. “Cause marketing is where corporations do things where they are more interested than engaging with the community that just being there to make a buck.”

That sentiment fits Common John Brewing Co. perfectly. Chilsen said that the Manchester brewery’s community engagement is more than any he’s seen.

“I met these guys a while back and I thought that this might be good for what I was doing,” Chisen said. “The students met with them and worked out the details.”

John “Bull” Fletcher of Common John Brewing Co. said he and LeBron Haggard had been discussing how to work more with college students when he and Chilsen met by chance at a brewery event. The family connection to MTSU runs deep; Haggard’s daughter is an early alumna of the brand new fermentation science program at MTSU.

“While we were trying to figure out how to try to (connect) with MTSU’s audio/video department one of the professors just happened to be at one of our events,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said that when he began in media production, there weren’t many local people in the field.

“It’s a career path to be able to shoot video and highlight businesses,” he said. “We have a local university right up the road that has a great (media arts) department.”

Fletcher said video is now an essential aspect when it comes to a business telling its story.

“There’s a real career path for them,” Fletcher said. “Plus it highlights how great our town is. That’s what video does. Video is based on your scenery – your backdrop. The more video, the more people we have shooting video and highlighting … then the better people will appreciate the quality of life we have here.”