The Crew

Hi there! I'm Jarida Lily Hess, a co-director behind the documentary production “Step Culture”. This production is more than important to me as the original concept creator; as director I feel that I have aided the team by managing communication, directing narrative, and being the middleman for every team member and documentary participant. I've always loved dancing, and I've always loved dancers. Came as quite a shock to me when I realized soon into my life that I couldn't dance, born with no rhythm as some would say. But in the midst of that, my passions for watching and capturing dancing and dancers grew to incredible amounts. I was scrolling TikTok when I saw a creative stroll edit of a D9 fraternity from another school, and I just knew this as a documentary concept would be crazy. Now, the team is more than excited to capture Arkansas State NPHC traditions and school ‘Step Culture’.

In the process of creating the “Step Culture” documentary, I worked as the co-director alongside Lily Hess. Together, we were in charge of organizing our team’s responsibilities and roles in the day to day activities. I specifically worked on the documentary poster by designing and creating it with insight from our team and original photography by Rachel Rudd. I am excited for people to see what we have created because this documentary will encompass both entertaining and informative approaches to the world of stepping and strolling.

I worked as the producer for “Step Culture” and was responsible for helping set up interviews, as well as leading the interviews themselves. In addition, I was responsible for getting archival footage for the documentary and helping setup and tear down equipment when necessary. This topic is incredibly important to me because I feel as though people often don’t understand just what stepping and strolling are. This documentary sheds light on that and will educate people on just what this incredible form truly is.

My role in this team has been doing a lot of behind the scenes work, like scriptwriting, creating the website, and running the social media! For me, Step Culture was a neat topic to take a deeper look into because it's something I only ever saw in movies so being able to work with this team and learn more about step culture and the D9 in general has been such a fun and eye opening experience and I hope others feel this way as they watch the documentary!

In 'step culture' I was in charge of the shoot, which also included setting up the lights, and camera and adjusting the lights to ensure a good light before the interview started. We hope that through our documentary we can make more people aware of stepping, trolling, and Dive 9, the history of the culture, and how it continues to be passed down in universities today.

My name is Kenya Jones and I am the Lead Editor for “Step Culture”. My job is to organize, select,  and edit our footage to, all together, create the documentary. I work to not only craft a coherent and rich story of stepping and strolling and its deep history with the Divine 9, but to also bring light to the D9 and what they do and why they’re important.

Hey there! I’m Hayden Reynolds, the associate editor and audio engineer. Throughout this project, I have helped set up the equipment for interviews and gather footage for the Step Culture documentary. I am super excited for others to see our documentary! I think stepping and strolling can often be misunderstood, but our project helps showcase the true meaning and hard work that all the fraternities and sororities put into it. Along with that, we dive into the history of the D9 and how they got where they are today.