Just a few days after he invited us to one of the photo studios in Allard Hall, Colin Waugh was launching a CBC documentary that looks at the world from the perspective of trees that can live 1,000 years. Not long before that, it was a five-part web series about industrial design.

“When I’m not teaching, I work at a creative agency where I wear many hats – video, direction, cinematography,” says the sessional instructor in the Department of Design. 

For the past nine years, he’s brought what he’s learned wearing each of those hats to his introductory video production “classroom,” which is most often a studio in Allard Hall. 

“Coming into the classroom where students have big ambitions, exciting ideas and endless energy pushes me to dream bigger,” says Waugh.

Welcome to my “office”

Design classes are four hours long once a week, and Waugh’s course involves a lot of setup and teardown. 

“We don’t just walk out at the end of class,” he says. “There’s this buffer time where we're all cleaning up, unloading drives and transferring data. It’s a great time for students to come up and connect one-on-one. In those moments, I try to push them to do something that matters to them in their projects, or to go after a genre or a type of production that they have a lot of sense for in their own lives.” 

Waugh brings interesting gels and filters to class (like the one above) because he says that, while there’s a place for very polished approaches, there’s more joy in the “weird” ones. 

“The sooner students realize that it’s not about perfection in images – that they’re striving for character, interest and developing their own perspective, the better,” he says. “I like to show students how weird they can make an image and then work back to making sure they can do something professional.”

“The cool thing about video production and capture is that the same fundamentals of exposure work on a $100 camera and a $100,000 camera,” says Waugh. “If students learn how to create a good image, there's no additional learning for them to jump right into some sort of high-end production. Once you learn the core ideas, everything else is just your imagination.”

What does it mean to have your students and colleagues nominate you for a teaching award? 

“A lot has changed over the decade I’ve been a sessional instructor – the building we’re in, the equipment we have, how we deliver courses – and I keep coming back because teaching is a great outlet and way to reenergize my love for the discipline,” says Waugh. “Being recognized by faculty and students that my work hasn’t gone unnoticed is something special.”

So is seeing his students follow a similar path. “The course I teach is only one in an entire design program, but I’ve still seen a good number of students become filmmakers. I get to cheer them on as they go forward and help them when they reach out to me with questions as they move through their careers.”