Matthew Salzano, A&E Editor
The question every Lute is trying to answer: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Juniors Camille Adams and Rachel Diebel are on their way, and students get to watch.
Diebel and Adams started answering the question in their freshman year. On assignment from The Mooring Mast, they created a video package together to accompany a story.
Former General Manager Storm Gerlock found out that Adams wanted to be a screenwriter. She encouraged Adams and Diebel to write and produce a show for Mast TV and they liked the idea.
“We literally just decided to,” Diebel said. “If we had known what it entailed, we would have never had done it. But since we were so naive, we were like ‘we can just film a thing,’ like ‘that’s fine!’”
Two years later, Adams and Diebel are best friends, housemates and entering their third year writing original series for Mast TV.
Last year, their second show, “Impressions,” contained six episodes, totaling sixty minutes of content. These sophomores’ attempt proved to be quality.
Photo Courtesy of Camille Adams
She’s making Adams a T-shirt about her Emmy nomination.
This fact is not well-known around campus, getting lost in the shuffle during end-of-year activities, so take note now. This is the first time in Pacific Lutheran University history that anyone has been nominated for a Pacific Northwest College Emmy in the Writing Category.
“We couldn’t believe we were able to be there,” Adams said. “Hearing all the speeches of professionals who have been in the business for twenty years, and this is [the professionals’] first Emmy, and they’ve been nominated and nominated just waiting for this… It was phenomenal to think that we were just at the very beginning of that process at [the age of] twenty.”
Their nomination has only fueled their wild ambition. Diebel, the director and producer said this year will be the most ambitious project yet.
“We want to win that Emmy!” she said. “This year’s production is a lot more formal, planned and well put together than the previous years. We have a much bigger team than we’ve had in the past. The first year, it was literally just Camille and I doing everything. This year we have more official production team roles… It’s going to look more official.”
This year’s show is “Dear Emily,” a 24-episode adaptation of the children’s book “A Little Princess” in a video blog style. It will premiere in the spring. The 18th-century book tells a hopeful story of a young girl who, upon her father’s death, loses everything but overcomes her miseries.
“‘The Little Princess’ gets dark, as books of the 18th century for little girls go, like parental death is dark,” Adams said. “So we’re trying to get to some themes of privilege, and loss, and get those to an audience.”
The production duo wants to get audiences to connect on a personal level.
“I think that it would be nice if people would consider their own privilege, especially in the United States attending, you know—its not Stanford, but PLU is a very nice university with a good reputation,” Diebel said. “It’s important for us to look at our own position. I hope that the show at least gives people some sort of pause.”
Later this year, students can tune into “Dear Emily” on Mast TV. Students should pause and consider the grand, important themes of what is shaping to be another Emmy-worthy series and the nature of what Adams and Diebel are doing. They are passionate about their work, they are good at it and they are reaping in accolades.
In the words of junior Denae McGaha, actress in “Impressions” and “Dear Emily,” “Look at the kind of results you can get if you just act on what you’re interested in!”
