FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — University of Arkansas professor Larry Foley and associate professor Dale Carpenter have been making award-winning documentaries for two decades, both working together and on their own. All of their films are about subjects they care about, whether it’s Arkansas history, World War II fighter planes, forgotten movie stars or little known Indian tribes. Their most recent collaboration, however, is an 18-minute promotional film; still, “Echoes of Inspiration” is as personal an effort as anything they’ve done. It has also won them their first awards for promotional work.

Larry Foley

Dale Carpenter

“Echoes” is about the University of Arkansas.  It was commissioned by the Division of University Advancement to be shown as part of the gala celebration winding up the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century. Foley said he wanted the film to do more than highlight the campaign and fund-raising.

“I thought we should focus on what is truly special about this university, the reasons why people were willing to contribute so much money: the way people feel about the place, both its traditions and the ways it’s changing,” Foley said. “I thought the best way to do all that was to focus on the students.”

Foley and Carpenter profiled three seniors who were getting ready to graduate; then, the following semester, they talked with an incoming freshman about his reasons for picking Arkansas. The four students reflected the diversity of the student body: one came from a Razorback “dynasty,” with parents and siblings who had attended the university; another was the first person in his family to graduate from college; and the freshman was a Bodenhammer scholar who could have gone to any college in the country but chose Arkansas.

Foley usually writes the scripts for the films he makes with Carpenter. But for “Echoes” he let the student’s words tell the story, also using interview segments with various university faculty and administrators. Carpenter’s images of the campus help bring those words to life, completing the picture of the campus and creating the feel for the place that Foley was hoping to achieve. Both men agree it was more than just a promotional film — it was a labor of love.

“I’m a U of A guy,” says Foley. “My earliest memories of life were being on campus when my parents were living in married student housing. I came back to teach here because it was what I truly wanted to do. This film was unique for me; it was lots of fun to work on.”

Prior to coming to the university, Carpenter worked with Foley in commercial and public broadcasting and later joined him in the broadcast journalism program at the university. He didn’t grow up on campus, but he shares Foley’s feeling.

“I love the U of A. The whole point of this film was to show people we’re doing good things here,” Carpenter said. “It was a real pleasure to work on. It took time, and hard work, but everything we needed was all right here in our back yard.”

On April 27, at the BEA’s annual convention, Foley and Carpenter received the Award of Excellence in promotion and a Special Technical Merit award for “Echoes of Inspiration.” It was the first time they’d won awards for a promotional film, but it may not be the last. They are in the process of making a UA public service announcement to run during televised football games.  They’re also working on an 8-minute film, “Beacon of Hope, the Story of the University of Arkansas”, which Foley and Carpenter will expand into a 30-minute documentary to air on public television. They obviously still have things they want to tell people about the University of Arkansas.