Sound, sequins, students: Strictly Come Surrey

Maths BSc student James Warren with his partner Chloe Boniface were crowned Strictly winners with a beautiful Viennese waltz to Misty Blue. As well as James and Chloe, there was a whole host of others who allowed everyone to keep dancing!

Take a bow….

Behind the scenes, final year Film Production and Broadcast Engineering (FBPE) student Carl Moller took on the lion’s share of pre-production filming and editing introductory videos for the ‘celebs’ – in actual fact, staff and students who had been volunteered to take part!. Carl directed the final show but also co-produced with Ollie Almond from Stage Crew and Jess Blaker from Ballroom and Latin Dance Club (BLDC) to bring the whole event to life. 

Music and Sound Recording (Tonmeister) student Luke Haldane led the sound team, with able assistance from Cal Weyland-Oliver, Ahan Sengupta, Shaan Sethi and many others. 

Live music was performed by the University of Surrey's Big Band with the talented GSA student Erin Rowlatt as musical director and her wonderful musicians. 

Stage Crew took on the challenge of designing and building the lighting and the glitzy staging within five days of the broadcast: well done to Ollie Almond and his team!

All the dancers’ hard work showed on the dance floor with great choreography and energy – not to mention managing to shoe-horn time to practise with their busy ‘celeb’ partners. Thank you to adventurous student and staff ‘celeb’ colleagues for stepping out of their comfort zone into Cuban heels and into the glitterball spotlight! 

The Strictly contestants were: James and Chloe, Micheal and Maia, Chris and Emma, Sheeba and Corinna, Belen and Harrison, Jiyeon and Ioanna, Ravi and Lucy.

Members of the BLDC performed and choreographed three spectacular numbers opening the show with an amazing cha routine to ‘Push the Button’, then they entertained the audience with a jive to ‘Proud Mary’ and finished the show with a resounding samba to ‘The Lion King’.

Ovations for....

Ovations too for the following for their essential contributions to making the live stream such a success:

• Tom Armes for designing the graphics and edited the highlights
• FPBE student Virginia Shum as production assistant on the live broadcast
• FPBE student Will Binning as vision mixer
• Billie Kinstrey as support engineer at the right-hand side of…
• TV Studio Technical Manager Sam Sarjudeen
• FPBE Programme Leader, Alan Haigh, for helping out with technical infrastructure
• FPBE students and Stag TV members who formed the gallery crew and camera operators
• Computer Science alumnus, Josh Day, who managed the vision engineering.
• NEP Group, Inc, Vivid Broadcast, Siyan Ltd, WLX and Delta Live who kindly lent some amazing broadcast equipment for the production giving students the experience of working with industry-standard equipment
• Susan Pratt who supported and guided all her students up to and during the broadcast
• Judges Dr Micheal Foskett, Nika Foskett, Allen Wesson and Paige Mullen for taking on the impossible adjudicating task
• FPBE student, Bethany Allan Molland, for her first presenting role in the interval show, and her studio crew.
• Liam White and Cara May Chedid who successfully led the show from the front of house.

Associate Professor Susan Pratt, Academic Lead for Employability, who teaches on FPBE, said:

“Producing an ambitious live stream show such as Strictly Come Surrey embeds professional skills into the curriculum, prepares our students for placements and gives them experience working in an outside broadcast environment, especially with our industry partners loaning us additional professional equipment. This year, the interval show included two of our graduates who explained how working on previous big productions prepared them for placement and their graduate jobs and gave them belief in their own abilities.”

You can take a look behind the scenes and watch the broadcast here.