ART STUDENT DEPICTS A GIRL’S SUICIDE

The images in Nick Don Vito’s multimedia presentation “In My Room” are ominous: A troubled girl lies in a rumpled bed with a bottle of barbiturates and a pistol nearby. Crucifixes and other religious symbols pass over the screen repeatedly. Overlapping shots of clocks show time slipping by.

The subject is suicide, and Don Vito’s approach is unrelenting. His efforts were recently saluted by the South Pasadena-based Assn. of Visual Communicators (AVC) with a bronze medal at its annual awards ceremony for professionals and students. Don Vito, a communications major at Chapman College in Orange, created the six-minute “In My Room” for a slide-tape class last semester.

“I was surprised to win anything because I didn’t think the subject matter would go over well,” said the 22-year-old Fullerton resident. “These types of presentations often deal in positive, sugar-coated, commercial images. You can’t say my show has much of that.”

Don Vito said slide-tape programs, with their intercutting photographs and simple voice-overs, are usually used to promote products in institutional business presentations or as educational tools. Occasionally, the techniques are employed in low-cost television commercials to sell merchandise.

“All the shows I had seen up to that point were about children and were happy. I guess it’s easier to market things that way,” he said. “I felt saturated with that type of a presentation.”

So instead, Don Vito searched for a somber, challenging reference and came up with an exploration of a girl’s decision to take her own life. The presentation, using three screens and projections, is cool, even detached and loosely follows the young woman through her day. Some of the images are specific, while others are highly abstract. Accompanying the visuals are a computer-created voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer and strains of droning, futuristic music.

Despite claims that teen-age suicide is on the rise--the Orange County Mental Health Department says there were 20 confirmed suicides in the county in 1985 for people under 20--Don Vito said he didn’t want the show to be a preachy, anti-suicide statement.

Although finding suicide abhorrent, Don Vito said he does not feel comfortable with telling others how to act. With this in mind, he made a point of not showing the repercussions of the girl’s death. There aren’t any concluding shots of weeping parents and friends or sermons about life’s beauty.

“It was important for me not to get involved. What I wanted were dramatic images, and that was all. Suicide, after all, is a very personal thing that only the individual” can come to terms with.

Although it doesn’t take a position, the presentation does provoke thoughts about what leads someone to take such a step. Most of the images settle on personal isolation and the self-conscious depression that stems from being alone and having nowhere to turn.

The moody images impressed the AVC, which complimented Don Vito for “the creative and very personal” quality of the piece. The AVC is a national organization that supports writers, directors and producers in their making of audio-visual presentations for business, education, government and entertainment, according to a policy statement.

The images also had an impact on his classmates, Don Vito said. “It really got people talking. . . . The religious symbols especially affected them. Some thought it showed religion as a solution. Others thought it showed how organized religion can’t help much” in a time of crisis.

Besides slide-tape work, Don Vito has dabbled in various areas of the visual media. Through Chapman College classes, he’s worked on short films and was part of a team that won a campus award for a video spoofing slasher horror movies. Don Vito has been a photographer since he was 14.

With these varied interests, it’s not surprising that he isn’t sure which direction he’ll take. After his graduation in May, Don Vito plans to take some advanced film courses, possibly at USC, and then go from there.

“I’m curious about so many things that I’ll just have to see,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure I’ll end up doing something visual, creative and personal.”