In Visual Story, ETC Students Learn To Show, Not Tell

By Hannah Kobre

ETC Teaching Professor Ralph Vituccio has been teaching his Visual Story course for close to 25 years. Now, after receiving a new appointment in CMU’s Film & Visual Media Program, he’s handing the reins over to his colleague — and reflecting on his experience leading the course. 

Visual Story is one of the core courses ETC students are required to take in their first semester, also known as the Immersion Semester. The Immersion Semester gives each student a necessary foundation in the ETC’s unique interdisciplinary approach, providing them with a common vocabulary and skill set that will enable them to collaborate successfully. In Visual Story, ETC students learn both the history and the technique behind telling stories with images.

It’s been a key part of the Immersion Semester from the start. When ETC co-founders Randy Pausch and Don Marinelli were developing the program they asked companies what they were looking for in new hires. Two things stood out: “teach them how to work well with each other, and teach them how to think visually.” In search of someone who could teach such a class, Pausch and Marinelli went to the now-defunct arts nonprofit Pittsburgh Filmmakers for a recommendation; eventually, they were connected with Vituccio, who at the time was the Director of CMU’s Media Design Studio.  

The curriculum — often described as “a filmmaking class for non-filmmakers” — draws heavily from Vituccio’s background as a documentary filmmaker. “It was a struggle at first, because I started out with a more traditional film approach,” Vituccio says. “Students didn’t get it, because they didn’t want to do film. They wanted to do video games.” He realized he needed to switch gears. “I started trying to show them the crossover, that the principles they use to tell stories in film are the same in video games and in virtual reality. Then it really started clicking.” 

Vituccio begins the semester by lecturing on film history and technique — providing a crash course in visual language and terminology through cinema. Students are then assigned different exercises where they get to apply what they’ve learned; in the first one, for example, students are tasked with creating a self-portrait in a visual medium of their choice. As the semester continues, they team up with other students in the class to develop narrative-based projects.

“Other core courses have them making something new every two weeks, but we want them to focus a little more on the pre-production side of things, to think about why they’re making the decisions they make,” says ETC faculty member John Dessler. 

Dessler has co-taught the course with Vituccio for the past decade and will take it over full-time starting next year. “It’s about getting everyone speaking the same vocabulary and understanding how we have control over things in traditional media,” says Dessler. “But what happens when you let the players take control? How do you supplement story with visuals in a 3D environment or a location-based experience?” 

“John [Dessler] calls it a hand grenade course,” Vituccio says. “You pull the pin, you throw it out there, and a couple years later it blows up. They’re out in the real world, working in critique teams, and all of a sudden it all comes back to them — the basic components of visual storytelling they were taught.” 

This is especially true for the students who come in thinking of themselves as only being programmers. For these technically-oriented students, Visual Story is their introduction to the creative side of the industry. It shows them that the work they do takes place within a broader context, and that creating any game or experience requires a team made up of people with all different strengths. And they discover their own creative side, too. “It can take them a little while,” Dessler says. “But by the end of the class, we prove that they’re all writers, they’re all artists, they’re all creators.” 

One of the best examples of this is game designer Walt Destler (ETC ‘11), who made a music video in Visual Story so iconic that Vituccio showed it in class long after Destler graduated. When Destler applied for an internship at Disney, a faculty member sent it to them as an example of his creative side. “They hired the guy based on the video!” Vituccio says. “They saw it and thought: ‘Bam! That’s Disney!’” 

“I remember after showing it for the first time in class, Ralph asked me to stand up for an ovation,” Destler, who now runs his own game studio, says. “It’s really fun going to alumni meetups and being recognized from it.” And he still uses the skills he learned in Visual Story today. “I learned to record and edit video, and that’s been useful again and again — particularly when it comes to game trailers and pitch videos.” 

In his new role, Vituccio will help develop the curriculum for a new undergraduate film major in Dietrich while shifting his focus at the ETC to the admissions process in addition to continuing to advise on projects.

As for the future of Visual Story, Dessler plans on continuing to teach the same core concepts and skills. But he also plans to continue to adapt to technological changes in the entertainment industry, making sure that students know how to apply the principles of narrative storytelling while keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation. Students have already begun the work of figuring out what that will look like, working on projects like immersive animated films or interactive video games that incorporate filmed content, but Dessler hopes to push the envelope even further. 

“What I’m hoping is this class starts moving into interactive environments and extended reality,” Dessler says. “Because we’re going to have these environments where you can create around people and not just in front of them very soon. And I’m always excited about new ways to tell stories.”

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