Interviews, travel footage, all-nighter editing sessions, and wild animal encounters—these are the elements that make “Producing the Documentary” an MCVA elective course staple. The course, offered every Spring semester at Pace University since 2006, has just embarked on their annual Spring Break trip to film interviews and on-location footage. Until this year, the course was primarily instructed by Dr. Maria Luskay, who recently retired prior to the 2025-2026 academic year. Taking on the role of head professor is Lou Guarneri, a Pace alum, current MCVA professor, and the co-director of the previous six documentaries.  

At its core, the Doc class is an experiential learning course where students “make a documentary film in the course of 14 weeks. They do everything from script to screen, so they do pre-production research, production, interviewing, transcribing, editing, the whole nine yards,” described Guarneri. 

The course has a travel element. Each year the students travel to a new location, typically covering a niche topic or event that is local to their selected region. In previous years, the Doc has been both domestic and international, traveling to Florida, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Spain, and France, among other locations. The most recent documentary, Harmony of the Azores, traveled to the Azores, a chain of Portuguese islands in the Atlantic Ocean. 

This year “is a kind of new era of the documentary since Dr. Luskay retired. We are doing a 20-year retrospective of the class, talking about the importance of telling stories, the impact that it has had on Pace University, and most importantly, the impact on our students on alumni,” explained Guarneri. Essentially, it is a documentary about the Producing the Documentary course. 

Due to this concept, the locations that the course is traveling to are based on the locations of several key interviewees, including Dr. Luskay. Three states, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, are the travel destinations for this year’s class. However, many of the interviews have already been conducted locally in New York, meaning this production was able to begin the editing phase significantly earlier than any earlier documentary. 

For students interested in taking the class, the prerequisites for undergraduates are Media Production I and Editing I. For graduate students, any grad enrolled in the Communications program is eligible. However, all students must go through an interview process in the Fall, as the course is both competitive and demanding.  

While combining grads and undergrads is untraditional, “there’s such an abundance of work that it’s always nice to have a variety of people with a variety of skill sets,” said Guarneri. The undergraduate students typically handle the more hands-on production elements of the course, building/breaking down sets, conducting interviews, and editing. The graduates handle work that better suits their distance and program.  

“What’s interesting about [the grads’] involvement is because the graduate program is online, there are moments where they’re doing work that is more conducive from being home,” explained Guarneri. This includes conducting pre-production research, leading interviews over Zoom with alumni who are long distance, and handling the majority of the social media, since all that work is remote. However, the graduate students also travel with the rest of the crew during Spring break and receive hands-on production experience as well. 

Every year, the documentary premieres at the Jacob Burns Film Center, a movie theater located in Pleasantville. This year, the premiere date is May 11, and Pace students receive a free small popcorn if they bring their Pace ID. Be sure to save the date and support your fellow students at the premiere! Some years, there are additional premieres, either in New York City or in the country the doc was filmed in, such as with the Spain and Azores docs. Furthermore, all of the previous docs are also available on the MCVA YouTube channel to view for free. 

Beyond the premiere, the documentaries are always submitted into film festivals, garnering over 30 wins throughout its history. This gives students the opportunity to be a part of award-winning documentaries before they graduate, preparing them for the realities of production once they enter the workforce.  

For students who may be interested in pursuing the documentary course, consider these words from Professor Guarneri: “Coming from someone who took this class as a student and now teaches it as a professor, it is one of the most unforgettable experiences I ever had as a student, and it is the thing that solidified my life that I wanted to be a filmmaker… It’s an experience that was so amazing for me that if I can play a little part in paying it forward for someone else, I’m always going to.” 

Be sure to keep up with the PaceDocs crew on their social media and blog for more updates!