Students Produce Documentary On Red Dead’s History, Popular UT Class, Book
Students and faculty advisors with Lumos Media Services and Land Grant Films pose for a group photo following Red Dead Redemption series actors Roger Clark and Rob Wiethoff after they surprised students in one of Associate Professor Tore Olsson’s Red Dead History course this past spring.
Alumnus and Lumos Media Services advisor Austin Orr (’22,’24) recalls signing up for Associate Professor Tore Olsson’s inaugural Red Dead History course.
Olsson uses the popular Red Dead Redemption video game series as part of the course to introduce students to different events, people, and themes of American history in the West, deep South and Appalachia during the late 1800s. Being a fan of the game and American history, Orr thought it was the perfect elective for him.
He was right and Olsson’s course remains one of his favorites from his time as a student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
So, when Olsson reached out last year seeking help promoting his new book based on the course—Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past—Orr leapt at the opportunity to help his former instructor.
“It’s like a full circle,” Orr said. “One of the biggest things that attracted me to Olsson’s class, and what I think is so fantastic about the course and the book, is that anybody who just has a passing interest in the games or American history could easily jump in and enjoy and understand it. I never imagined that years later I would be involved in such a big project to do with a class I was in just a few years ago.”
Orr used his connection to Lumos Media Services, a student-run commercial production unit within the College of Communication and Information Media Center that produces professional-grade video and still photography for its clients, to help Olsson with book promotion while providing Orr’s students a unique hands-on experience.
Olsson also received a recommendation to reach out to School of Journalism and Media Professor and CCI Media Center Director Nick Geidner for assistance from Land Grant Films, a documentary production company at UT. Like Orr, Geidner also saw the potential to provide students hands-on experience and worked with Olsson to create the Land Grant Films’ documentary Shooting for an A: Video Games and Education, based on the course.
The student-produced documentary premiered in Knoxville August 15 at the East Tennessee Historical Society Museum as part of a special event hosted by Union Avenue Books to promote Olsson’s new book.
“Not only are we excited to have our students’ work premiere at the East Tennessee Historical Society, but we are also working with a local broadcast partner to air the film on regional television,” Geidner said. “We hope that sharing the film will help educate and inform our community on this important topic.”
Orr said he is always looking for new and exciting ways to help the students grow and get hands-on experience in filming and editing. He said this project ticked all those boxes and it being about a popular video game series only added to the students’ excitement.
“This is a unique opportunity that isn’t necessarily available at other universities, and I think the students have utilized the amazing resources in our college to take their work to a new level,” Orr said. “This project is such an exciting opportunity for the students’ career development, and I can’t wait to see what they tackle next.”
Geidner said he, too, felt the connection to the game made students even more excited to be part of the project, adding students “were over the moon” to tell this story.
As part of the project, students worked with Olsson, Macmillan Publishers, and actors from the popular Red Dead Redemption video game series. A few even got to travel to Macmillan’s offices in New York City for filming.
Recent UT graduate Jacob Morelock (‘24) said he first heard about the project during a meeting with Land Grant Films and knew right away that he wanted to be a part of it.
“I have always been someone who plays video games a lot growing up and combining filmmaking with video games just seemed like an easy choice,” Morelock said. “I wanted something that would push me out of my comfort zone, and I knew instantly that this would be something that I would have a passion for and something I could strive to become a better cinematographer in.”
Morelock said the project delivered, adding he felt part of something bigger and it helped him get the most of his college experience right up to his final semester.
For junior cinema studies major Ben Cline, this was his first time working on a documentary.
Cline began working for Lumos Media on his third day at UT. Since then, he has worked on numerous projects from live broadcasting Milk Man & The Big Band’s performance this past spring, to shooting commercial videos for different academic units. A fan of the Red Dead Redemption video game series, Cline said this project has been one of his favorites so far. Not only because of the subject matter, but because he expanded his video skill set.
A unique experience for students was working with professional actors, which Orr said happened by chance. While planning their shoots, Orr said they learned that Roger Clark, the actor who plays Red Dead Red Redemption II protagonist Arthur Morgan, and Rob Wiethoff, who plays recurring series character John Marston, were visiting Knoxville to attend the Fanboy Expo in March. Clark also serves as narrator for the audiobook version of Olsson’s new book.
Orr said they reached out to both actors about the book promotion and documentary and they were amenable to being interviewed for the project. The actors even made a surprise guest appearance in one of Olsson’s classes during the spring semester, with help from the UT History Department, the Denbo Humanities Center, and the College of Arts and Sciences.
Students captured footage of the “class crash,” some of which was shared with national video game and popular culture news website IGN a for coverage about Olsson’s upcoming book, which received millions of views over multiple social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Sophomore cinema studies major and Lumos Media videographer Caleb McNeil said it was exciting to work with professional actors and amazing to see footage used by IGN that the students took of the actors surprising students.
McNeil said he revisited playing the game once the project started but has just loved geting experience in filming. He has worked on several projects with Lumos, such as the partnership with Great Smoky Mountains National Park to create videos highlighting the park’s history, but this project ranks up there for him thus far.
Olsson said working with Lumos Media and Land Grant Films these past few months to help promote the book has been amazing.
“I haven’t really thought of them as students,” Olsson said. “They blew me away with their professionalism, not just in how they operated but the work they produced.”
Teaching history through video games
Olsson said he got the idea for his Red Dead History course after rekindling his love for gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Red Dead Redemption II was one of the games most recommended to him to check out. As he played through, the historian in him started to react strongly to the game’s imagery and story. He thought it depicted the West in the late 1800s in a way not radically different from how professional historians would.
However, it was when the storyline moved to the deep South that his interest piqued as a southern historian.
“I just saw so many possibilities in the game for pulling on threads and then using them to teach the intricacies of the so-called New South at that moment,” Olsson said. “That was when everything clicked for me. This is stuff I know really well, and these are things I’d love to use in the classroom to get students excited about the material.”
He did not know what to expect when he first pitched and taught a class using a video game to kick off discussions about American history. Olsson said, while using popular culture to generate interest in history was nothing new, he had never seen it done before using video games.
Over time the course would grow more and more popular, attracting not only more students, but also local and national media attention. Building on the course’s success, Olsson decided to condense the information he shares as part of the course into a book to hopefully make this knowledge more accessible to the public.
He hopes the book—which hit bookstores in August and is also available on audiobook services—would help the wider public learn more about this history as it did for many UT students.
As he promoted his new book ahead of the launch, Olsson said he was blown away by the interest and excitement surrounding it. He even got to talk about the concept alongside actor and narrator Clark at a crowded session at the 2024 San Diego Comic Con.
“It’s just completely unbelievable,” Olsson said. “I am still pinching myself. It’s just a testament to the possibilities of marrying history, video games, digital production, and filmmaking. The university is the pressure cooker that made all this happen.”
Students Produce Documentary On Red Dead’s History, Popular UT Class, Book written by Ernest Rollins and originally published on the College of Communication & Information site.