Lights, camera, graduation!

18 Jul 2014

How Media Services put spotlight on our proud graduands

Last week StaffNet looked at how University staff help our students celebrate their graduation.

This week we see how the Media Services team put the spotlight on their ceremonies and make it a day to remember.

The 30-strong Media Services team film all the graduation ceremonies, which are broadcast live on the University website and onto screens around the campus. They also produce a DVD for each of the ceremonies, so that students and their families can relive their proud day.

The team film, edit, post produce and provide copies of all ceremonies to the public.

This requires:

• a seven person crew for each ceremony – four camera operators, a sound engineer, a vision engineer and director;
• four members of staff operating a sales desk supplying high definition Blu-Ray and DVD copies of the ceremonies – we were the first University in the country to provide a high definition, Blu-Ray product, launched at the summer ceremonies of 2011;
• a central administration team of four who process customer orders and send the copies out globally;
• and two technical staff to take care of providing live, overspill viewing and ensuring that the signals are provided for the web stream.

Preparations for the ceremonies begin two weeks before as an entire live production studio is built within the Whitworth Hall, with signage produced and other materials prepared.

On an average day during graduation the team are on campus from 8am, setting up the sales desk and preparing the production equipment, until 7.30pm each day when the last ceremony has finished and the visitors begin to leave.

The team has been providing this service in various guises since the 1970’s and has an archive of the ceremonies dating back to 1982, when this was made possible with tape-based media.

The service is a central directive which President and Vice Chancellor Professor Nancy Rothwell has requested commitment to, due to its importance to our graduates and their families.

The team has had a lot of feedback from proud and happy graduands and their families, including this from Patrick Sparrowhawk, whose granddaughter Rosie graduated last week: “Please thank your team for the wonderful job of filming the ceremony last Thursday. It was superb, I managed to record it ok, we saw Rosie and her parents in the crowd scenes which made it even more special. I have edited to the ceremony and the "important bits" so we now have a wonderful memory of a very special day. My son said the day was done so well all the happy faces, and the hall was out of this world, thank you again.”

Media Services Manager Trevor Byrne said: “For some of my staff, the graduations take over their entire workload for the best part of a month and even longer as they are sending copies of ceremonies around the world for several weeks after they finish.

“It’s a lot of work but exciting and fulfilling, with some lovely feedback from families too. It’s a good time of year for my team and the whole of the campus.”