Through the front door of Yeager Hall on campus lies a wall of commemorated journalists who greet those who enter. An SDSU faculty member saw this and it sparked an idea that would ultimately award him an honor from the South Dakota Film Festival.
SDSU Associate Professor Rocky Dailey was awarded at the 16th annual South Dakota Film Festival held in Aberdeen, South Dakota for Best Documentary Short with his film “The Dean of South Dakota Broadcasting” in September.
“This is a part of a project I started a few years ago because my background is broadcast journalism,” Dailey said. “When you walk into Yeager Hall you see the newspaper hall of fame and it got me thinking about, you know, ‘Where’s the broadcaster hall of fame? Where’s that content?’”
Using his background in photojournalism, Dailey selected a documentary to portray the stories of significant figures in the SD broadcasting scene.
“Documentary film is my favorite because it combines filmmaking and journalism; it’s a nonfiction narrative,” Dailey said.
Dailey’s expertise and passion for the film style, as well as a grant received in 2020 to pursue the project, aided in the development of what became an award winning production.
“It was a lot of fun! I was able to go [to the South Dakota Film Festival],” Dailey said. “I always kind of geek-out when I see it on the big screen because I’ve only seen it on my monitor.”
“The Dean of South Dakota Broadcasting” was not the first chapter of Dailey’s mission to bring SD broadcasting into light, nor was it his first submission to the SDFF.
“The one that just won the award is the second episode so it’s a series,” Dailey said. “I actually had submitted the first episode but it wasn’t chosen. I did a project with a student a few years ago that we submitted and also wasn’t chosen.”
With four episodes of the series, a SDFF award for best Documentary Short, and airtime on the South Dakota Public Broadcasting TV stations over the summer of 2023 all under his belt, Dailey has no intentions of slowing down the production of these documentaries.
“My goal is to do one episode a year. Really, this could go on for 10 years or more,” Dailey said. “I’m pretty confident I can keep on that schedule and my goal is to get more students involved and maybe a student produces an episode on a person they’re interested in. There is no end in sight.”
With his goal to eventually collaborate with students on his project, Dailey offered some advice for aspiring filmmakers to achieve their own personal goals.
“Know your equipment,” Dailey said. “Even my older phone shoots 4k video. The equipment really does a lot of the things for you. You don’t want to do a topic you’re not interested in because then it just becomes work. My mother told me once, ‘You’ll never work a day in your life doing something you love, but if you’re ever so into something that hours go by and you don’t know, that is what heaven is like.’ Play around; shoot some things, edit some things. It’s never been easier [to].”
Dailey was overall pleased by the success of his work and enjoyed seeing the impact it had on the locale.
“This project especially has an impact. There is a local audience,” Dailey said. “We’ve gotten feedback from South Dakota Broadcasting Association and the screening there, whereas some of the things you do as a professor, you write an article and it’s in a journal somewhere, but you never know who sees it or what they think about it. With this, I can see the impact and see that people are interested in it and it’s fun.”
