Univision success shows Surrey collaboration at its best
The University of Surrey once again seamlessly hosted the major cross-university ‘Univision’ show last week, for the second year running. Based on the ever-popular Eurovision Song Contest, singers and groups from universities across England and Wales performed live in Surrey’s University Hall on campus, whilst the show was simultaneously broadcast live on YouTube.
The production was a collaboration between students on the TV Studio module on the Department of Music and Media’s Film Production and Broadcast Engineering degree course, the Students Union and Surrey societies Stag TV and Stage Crew.
Fourth year Film Production and Broadcast Engineering student George Roberts took on the challenge of engineering the production as his final year project. After months of planning and turning theory into practice, George designed the broadcast infrastructure for the main venue, and connected it with the Stag TV offices to become a temporary studio space. With the support of the department’s TV Studio Manager, George set up and checked the audio and video communications during a full week of rigging and rehearsals across multiple locations, whilst also managing the transmission of the production on the day. Students from other years were involved in other organisational, operational and production roles of the programme and contributed to its success by applying skills they have learnt whilst studying their degree, to a real live event. Second year Music and Sound Recording (Tonmeister) students built a unique communication system for the production to work more smoothly across the various locations involved on campus.
Susan Pratt, programme leader for the Film Production and Broadcast Engineering degree, said: “The completely student-led partnership organised the whole event, from complex infrastructure, staging, lighting, crew on the night to advertising, production and execution of the final broadcast. The whole team should be very proud of what they have achieved.”
After bringing together seven universities across the country on a Sunday night, over 600 public votes were cast in a 20-minute live vote, before Southampton act Alex Page was crowned the winner of the 2022 event.
Watch the full show here.
Learn more about the Film Production and Broadcast Engineering degree, here.
UniVision 2022
