University News Last updated 17 May 2017
Our BA (Hons) Media and Communication students recently had the exciting opportunity to be involved in CRAFT- a pilot project involving collaboration with students across different subject areas to create seven inspiring productions.
The extra-curricular project was the first of its kind at Birmingham City University and any students that wanted to be a part of it were invited to join. It involved students from Media, helped by others from Acting, Fashion and Architecture along with students from the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment. They worked together over four weeks to create six films and one audio book with support from technicians and the Project Manager, David Remes.
Two industry workers were also involved with CRAFT, Marc Silk, a voiceover artist, and Nick Prosser, a director with credits at Eastenders, The Bill and Brookside. Nick gave workshops throughout the month about both direction and how to behave in front of a camera, and Marc worked with students to create voice characterisations for the audio book.
BA (Hons) Media and Communication student April Ely worked with Nick during the project and was in charge of the main gallery during the shoot. She ran the ingest/ VT desk and vision mixed a multi camera drama. Having initially joined CRAFT with the intention to learn more about the role of a director for her final year project, April came out of CRAFT also knowing how to use the VT desk, the intricacies of vision mixing and how to work with a large cast.
The project was a complete blank canvas in that students were able to put forward any ideas they had and were able to create them. From this, Media students Sam Gould and Dominika Suskova created a satirical TV and online news programme called ‘Best Before End’. They directed, shot and produced the programme in just two days using the School of Media’s impressive onsite studio. The production incorporated students from Birmingham School of Acting who took on roles as correspondents and reporters and delivered news in a satirical manner, covering subjects such as Brexit and the Scottish referendum. Speaking about the experience Dominika recounted how grateful she was to have worked with so many talented and skilled BCU students:
CRAFT was a truly collaborative project that brought students with varying skillsets together and yielded some wonderful outcomes. It has hopefully set the stage for future, collaborative practice and even more exciting productions.
You can read more about CRAFT on our dedicated School of Media blog, with contributions from the students who took part and links to videos of the content they created!
