Film production students wowed by £16m visit from broadcast giants EMG
Europe Media Group outside broadcast (OB) specialists and their subsidiary CTV gave The University of Surrey a fast-paced taste of life working in live TV last week, when they visited campus with their state of the art £16m OB truck.
In the afternoon, the Department was joined by 50 Maths A-level students from widening participation backgrounds from colleges across Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. Coordinated by the Widening Participation & Outreach Team, the Taster Day introduced what it would be like to study the Film Production and Broadcast Engineering degree here at Surrey, followed by a practical overview to how TV pictures are made and transmitted. Students had the opportunity to use the cameras and sound equipment and even try out vision engineering or vision mixing, plus gain an understanding of why understanding science and studying maths is imperative to broadcasting.
Susan Pratt, Programme Leader for the Film Production and Broadcast Engineering course, said:
“It was amazing to have the OB truck right in the heart of the campus and to broadcast our university’s student societies sports events. The professionals from CTV were wonderful with the visiting college students and took such care and time to demonstrate their roles. To see the students take on such challenging work in the OB truck - jobs they didn’t know existed until a few hours earlier - was immensely satisfying for everyone involved in the day. Our current students also loved gaining first-hand experience on current broadcast equipment and talking to experienced industry professionals”.
The Film Production and Broadcast Engineering students commented “It was an amazing experience and an exciting opportunity to work with professionals and their kit”.
The University of Surrey’s Film Production and Broadcast Engineering BEng degree (formerly called Film and Video Production Technology) combines broadcast engineering, artistic storytelling and professional film making. The course has recently been accredited by the Institute of Engineering and Technology.* CTV has been a professional placement partner of the Film Production course for three years, providing third year students with industry experience and knowledge even before they graduate.
CTV (Part of EMG) has been delivering excellence in outside broadcast since 1983. They maintain long term contracts for The European Golf Tour for ETP, Premier League Football for BBC Sport, and Cricket and Darts for Sky Sports. They are widely recognised as the leading provider for light entertainment programmes and events, covering recurring annual events including The Brits, The BAFTA's and The BBC Music Awards, as well as primetime studio-based programmes that need to go on the road, such as Strictly Come Dancing and the X Factor Live Final.
*Accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partly meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer.
