DEBORAH L. LARSON, Ph.D.
Deborah L. Larson holds her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Missouri with an emphasis in Media. For the past 24 years she has taught Television Production, Advanced Television Production, Mass Media and Society, Media Analysis and Criticism and Women in Film courses at MSU.
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Her research interests include instructional scaffolding as a production model, pedagogy, women directors, and women’s characterization in film and television. She is a strong advocate for diversity and women behind the scenes in film and television production as well as in front of the camera.
Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours?
WEB SERIES
Since 2012, Deborah has been producing large capstone media projects for Missouri State University’s Media, Journalism & Film department. Partnering with Diana Dru Botsford, they produced the multiple award-winning web-series Epilogue: http://epiloguetheseries.com
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On shooting Epilogue: A web series is a great way to combine our Digital Film and Media Production programs by shooting three-camera setups in some locations with a Tricaster mobile studio unit and single camera film technique in others. It’s the perfect capstone for our Mass Media majors. All the students involved (and that includes art, theatre, electronic arts, and fashion students) are able to experience how a production crews works in the real world with hierarchy, structure, budgets and departments.
Since Epilogue, the MJF department has created a second award-winning web series, A Little Help, http://alittlehelp.missouristate.edu
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A Little Help has been in both the Miami and LA Web fests and won several awards, including a Silver Telly for the Opening Animation Sequence, and a LA Webfest win for Best Theme Song composition.
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REALITY TELEVISION
In 2015, Dr. Larson decided to go back to her television roots. Working with several graduate and undergrduate students, we developed the state’s first broadcast television competitive cooking show, Show-Me Chefs aired for four season on KOZL-TV, Ch 27 and on the web.
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The purpose of the show is to provide students with a real television crew experience while casting talented chefs in our region, as they compete in three rounds highlighting locally produced meats, cheeses, produce, wine, beer, spirits and other specialty items.
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On Show-Me Chefs: The community engagement between Missouri State University and the chefs, restaurants, farms, specialty food producers and business sponsors are what we are all about. The show highlights local talent and sponsors in many forms!
From a successful first season to multiple awards for Seasons 2 through 5, each season we worked to all aspects of the show. With 11 cameras, diary rooms and 5-7 packages shot for each episode in the 7 series, each season the large student crew worked hard to bring us great television, highlighting everything great about southwest Missouri’s farming practices and foodie scene through a fun chef competition. Unfortunately, Covid-19 shut down our 5th and largest season of SMC in the middle of production. We since have had to regroup size and location.
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Co-Op is our new escape roomesque show that is Covid Friendly. It pits two teams against each other, film separately with teammates in seperate rooms where they have to communicate and work together to do tasks and solve puzzles. Students created, tested and and produced the series with minimal crew and cast under covid production protocols.