Campus Celebs: Jordan Durham and Jaz McKibben

Three Point Park University students are about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. They are going to Cape Town, South Africa to make a documentary about one of the most feared, and misunderstood members of the animal kingdom: the shark. They recently became 100% crowd-funded and I chatted with two of the team members, Jordan Durham and Jaz McKibben so Her Campus Point Park could check out Rock Bottom: The Truth Behind Shark Finning!

Her Campus (HC): What is Rock Bottom about?

Jaz McKibben (JM): Rock Bottom is a documentary that explores the misconceptions surrounding sharks through our journey to SA [South Africa]. It will focus on both the animals themselves, as well as our personal journey and the evolution of our beliefs surrounding the sharks.

HC: How did the team come together?JM: Jordan and I were sitting next to each other in a computer lab (by coincidence) and started talking about our hopes for the future.

Jordan Durham (JD): We started to talk about our interests in wildlife and film.  We decided at that moment that we needed to make a wildlife documentary.We started the process by searching for an animal to make a documentary on.

JM: As soon as one of us mentioned sharks, we found out that both of us love them. We didn’t think sharks would be possible as a topic at first, but it ALWAYS came back to them and we figured we should just go for it.

JD: And sharks are one of those animals that have such a negative reputation and we felt that it was a story untold. Blaise [Kepple] expressed strong interests in joining our team so we brought her on a few weeks later. Since then it’s just been a great time working with each other and planning this whole film out.

HC: What was it like to get 100% funded?JM: It took a moment to hit me, because I had been so stressed for such a long time. I had been having stress dreams about sharks and not sleeping for the week leading up to it. As soon as we got funded, it all just melted away. I’m pretty sure the first thing we did was hug each other – we purposefully chose not to look at the kickstarter until we were all together and wanted to share the moment. We all ended up screaming and jumping around.

HC: Have any of you been to Africa before? What about other continents/countries?JM: I’ve never been to Africa. I grew up overseas, living in Indonesia, Bolivia, and China.

JD: This will be the first time I leave the country. I’ve always wanted to but never had the resources to do so. This is the perfect time and place because I can leave the country and make a film at the same time.

HC: How have your family reacted to all of this?JM: My parents and sister have been incredibly supportive and continued to encourage me throughout the process. They are really happy that we were able to accomplish this.

HC:  What do you hope this film will do?JD: We would like to showcase the struggles that many sharks face today and help reduce the fear that films like Jaws [1975] have created. Most importantly we would like to inspire generations to come to dive into wildlife conservation. I believe there is too many reality TV shows that give a false image of this creature. I would like to just tell a true story dear to my heart.

JM: I really want people to see that sharks are something valuable and interesting, but even more than that, I want our generation to know that they can go out and make a difference if they work hard enough. There’s a lot of things going wrong in the world, and if everybody picked something they are passionate about to go out and help, the world would be a much better place. Aside from that, I hope it allows us to see sharks in a new light. Even though we want to conserve them, there is still so much that we don’t know – and I really feel that seeing a great white in person will be a spiritual experience of sorts.

Her Campus will certainly keep everyone posted on the team’s journey this summer! Be sure to like the documentary’s facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/rockbottomdocumentary