Production skills for the creative industries are innately practical skills and best acquired in a hands-on environment. That environment is offered to Level 4 Technical and Production Practice for the Creative Industries Professional Diploma Students through access to the equipment and opportunities available at The Backstage Centre. So, what do you do when, in the face of a global pandemic, access to these necessary items is no longer available? When your classroom is now your bedroom? and your teacher is only able to see you through a rectangle on the screen?
These challenges were approached more as opportunities by our technical students. They went live on YouTube this week to share their stories about how they put their technical and digital skills to use and continued to learn throughout various restrictions.
We heard from Pete Herbert, Course Leader, about how this live stream project ‘Techies from Home’ came to be.
“Teaching a technical subject in lockdown has brought a range of challenges for students and tutors alike, how can you develop student technical skills whilst performing keyhole teaching? With this challenge in mind, I decided to fall in line with the growing need for live streaming and create a project for my students studying on the level 4 professional diploma in technical and production practice for the creative industries, ‘Techies From Home’ was born. I gave them a simple brief, create a live stream that is all about you and your journey so far but be creative in how you present it. What they came up with was really entertaining, demonstrated their knowledge of the subject and highlighted their resilience.
Of course, it’s been setback for the students, however, we all stayed positive; I asked them to research, plan and develop a live stream production that showcased their work from the start of the year up to Feb half term 2021. The project would involve all the same technical issues, problem solving and communication, but from their bedrooms and dining tables.
They will have to run the live stream just like a show, maintaining organisational structure, completing tasks, creating content, and calling cues. It made us all come out of our comfort zones, working with Photoshop, After Effects and video editing applications, what a fantastic opportunity this was to broaden the student skill set and up their employability potential.
Live streaming events are certainly here to stay, the students on the Level 4 Professional diploma are the ones that will be the innovators for it going forward. “
Congratulations to the students and Pete on the success of their project. We look forward to having them back working at The Backstage Centre.
You can still watch this livestream via our YouTube channel.
