Students from Bangor University had an experience to remember by travelling to Cardiff to visit the Welsh Screen Alliance at Wolf Studios and the BBC headquarters in Central Square, Cardiff.
With their fellow students from Coleg Menai, they were tasked with filming a news item on the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Experienced director and camera person, Meinir Siencyn supervised the filming.
Carol Jones, Screen Academy Manager, said, "Building this relationship with professional crews is very important and an invaluable experience for the students and they certainly benefited from Meinir's advice and experience on the day. It was nice to see the students works together and negotiates when solving filming problems on location.”
"A special screening of those short films was organized in Pontio recently and it was nice to see the cinema full of family and friends. A wider range of work from the different modules of both Bangor University and Coleg Menai was also shown. It is such a beneficial experience for students to show their work to a wider audience and to see it on the big screen."
The Cardiff visit also included a career presentation by the educational team at Screen Alliance Wales and an overview of the large-scale, famous productions that are filmed in south Wales.
There was also an extended tour of BBC Wales headquarters, a brand-new building with the latest broadcasting technology. Our students had the opportunity to see the set of Crimewatch, Scrum V Live, S4C News and Wales Today as well as Radio Cymru and Radio Wales studios. Once again, there was an opportunity to meet professionals. There were sessions with the experienced editor Nikki Sirrell who explained how he went about editing for a documentary and the dubbing mixer Darran Clement showed how he went about placing the different layers of sound and how to create sound effects.
Stephanie Steventon, a lecturer in Media Production said, “The trip to Cardiff was an amazing opportunity for students to experience the realities of working within the creative industries. By having such hands-on experience at the BBC, students have hopefully come away feeling as though aspirations to work in these fields are not out of reach for them. Thanks to the opportunity to speak with a range of industry professionals at different stages of their careers in film, television and radio production, our students now have a clear focus for their time on their courses here at Bangor, whether that’s acquiring new soft skills, technical skills or just an awareness of how to break through into the creative industries post-graduation.”
Explore our Undergraduate Film, Media and Journalism Courses here