First graduate with Digital and Visual Storytelling degree takes center stage

While Grace Rolfe spent much of her childhood growing up with either her mother in Boston or her father in West Virginia, there is one vivid memory she recalls of a play she saw as a young girl at the Maxwell Performing Arts Theatre at Augusta University.

At the time, her father was stationed at Fort Eisenhower, then known as Fort Gordon, and he decided to take her to the play and walk around the campus.

“I was a little kid, and it was the first time I ever came here,” Rolfe said, adding that she remembered enjoying exploring the campus with her dad. “I moved back to Georgia when I was in high school, and it didn’t connect with me for some reason at first that this was the place we had come to and seen the play until I came on a tour here. I was like, ‘Wow. This seems really familiar.’ And I realized I’d been here before as a kid.”

Little did Rolfe know when she was a small child watching a play at the Maxwell Theatre that she would one day fall in love with filmmaking and become the first student to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital and Visual Storytelling degree from Augusta University.

“I feel really lucky,” Rolfe said, adding not only will she be the first student to graduate with this new BFA degree from Augusta University, but she will also be the first person in her family to graduate from college. “Who gets to be one of one graduating in their major? I’m the first. And because there were so few people in the program in the very first year or so, I got to have such a personal experience with all the professors and really gained a lot from the small class sizes that are at AU in general.”

The art of storytelling

The BFA in Digital and Visual Storytelling, which began in the fall of 2022, prepares students to be “cutting-edge visual storytellers” by developing diverse skill sets including a strong theoretical and technical understanding of filmmaking, theater performance, writing, directing and production through multiple forms of expressive media, said Scott Thorp, chair of the Department of Art and Design.

Rolfe said she has been inspired by the new BFA program headed by professors Matthew Buzzell, Melanie Kitchens O’Meara, PhD, and Doug Joiner.

“Professor Buzzell has definitely been a really great mentor to me since basically the beginning,” Rolfe said. “Honestly, I didn’t plan on doing the digital storytelling major. When I came to college, I was undecided. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had tinkered a little bit with majoring in political science or something like that. But, my first semester here, I took a film appreciation class because we had to have a humanities elective.”

To Rolfe’s surprise, she was immediately drawn to filmmaking, and Buzzell noticed that spark in her.

“He was like, ‘Hey, why don’t you check out our film certificate?’ Because that is all we had at the time, so I started taking the classes,” Rolfe said, adding that Buzzell eventually helped her understand how she could use this new BFA degree to help mold her future. “I’m actually planning on going to grad school for screenwriting. And, eventually, I would like to work in the film industry for a while, but my long-term goal is actually to teach film at the college level. Professor Buzzell really was that person who helped me figure it all out.”

Even as a child, Rolfe said she has always enjoyed exploring the art of storytelling.

“I was always interested in storytelling. I read a lot. I’ve always loved reading,” she said. “Then, eventually, I got into theater, which I enjoyed, but there’s something that was really personal about being able to get up close in someone’s face with a camera and film the performances.”

Rolfe said she enjoys seeing the stories she writes come alive as she is filming.

“Eventually, when it is brought to the screen, you are really intimate with these people,” Rolfe said. “And, with the types of things I like to write, I feel like that medium fits me best.”

One of Rolfe’s favorite semesters at Augusta University was taking O’Meara’s performance composition class immediately followed by Buzzell’s screenwriting class.

“Our program is kind of interdisciplinary in a really fun way because you get to take performance classes and film classes, no matter which one you are focusing on,” Rolfe said. “So, Dr. O’Meara really made me think so differently about writing and storytelling and form. It was such an invaluable experience because I remember taking her performance composition class still really early on in my journey here at AU. And I was taking screenwriting at the same time, so I would go straight from one to the other.”

Rolfe said O’Meara would challenge her writing and storytelling skills on stage, while Buzzell opened her mind to screenwriting.

“After Dr. O’Meara’s class I’d go straight to screenwriting and hear all these really great things from Professor Buzzell about form when it comes to screenwriting, and learning all the rules before you break them,” Rolfe said, laughing. “And I think combined, they gave me such a unique and excellent perspective on writing and storytelling, which is exactly what I wanted. So, I’m really lucky to have talented writers as my professors.”

Setting an example for the future

While Rolfe has thoroughly enjoyed her classes at Augusta University, she admits that in this final semester she has also felt a bit of pressure to set the stage for future students who are pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital and Visual Storytelling degree.

“A lot of the time, I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is the first student short film out of this major. I’m doing a lot of stuff before anybody else,’” Rolfe said, smiling. “So, hopefully, I set a good example for the program and the students who come after me.”

In December, Rolfe will screen her capstone film called, “Thick on the Ground” at the Maxwell Theatre.

“The title is based on an Appalachian phrase that means plenty of something or you have something in excess,” Rolfe said. “The story is about a family who is homeless. It is a single mother and two children who are living in a car together, except the children don’t know that they’re homeless. They have been told by their mother that they’re just camping out for the summer. And, over the course of a day, they kind of come to realize things aren’t as they seem.”

In “Thick on the Ground,” Rolfe said she explores her own identity as a child who grew up in both rural West Virginia and a major metropolitan area like Boston.

“A lot of my work here has been exploring that identity and the things that maybe contrast a little bit about me like being West Virginian and also kind of being from a city like Boston and also being queer and a young person and a woman in a time where the world is kind of crazy,” Rolfe said. “I think those small, kind of intimate stories are really important to me to tell in that kind of world. So, that’s what the film is about.”

As Rolfe prepares to walk across the stage and accept her diploma as the first graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital and Visual Storytelling program, she feels her life has come full circle.

“When I was a little kid, people would ask me what I wanted to do, and I would answer like a writer and an author a lot of the time. But I always said I wanted to go to college because I just loved learning. I always loved it,” she said. “And I love learning about what I love to do. So, getting to be here and learn about film and writing for film and some of the things I love so much has been such a privilege. I just think about my younger self and how I would be so thrilled to see me now.”