Theatre and Media

[Brady]

Hi all and thanks in advance.

 

I am a lecturer of technical theatre and our department is looking at branching into new innovative teaching.

 

We are a relatively small department but one area we I looking at is developing units based around media in live productions and theatre.

 

I was wondering if anybody could offer advice on what elements you believe should be taught to cover this field. We have some ideas ourselves but would like to know other peoples opinions. Also if you where employing somebody in this field what training would you expect them to have. Currently the course is based around the generic well know elements of technical theatre (light, sound, set and SM) but we are hoping to change this up a bit.

 

Once again thanks for any help you can give.

[Ynot]

I'm sure he'll be along in a mo, but your best starting place may well be our BR mod, Paulears.

[paulears]

Well - as you are no doubt aware, the BTEC qualifications are being revamped ready for the 2010 stat of the new qualification framework. There is a brand new unit written that has the current working title of Visual Imagery for Production - rather wordy and no doubt will be changed before release - however, it deals with video and associated imagery - think about we will rock you, return to the forbidden planet, that kind of show, along with current popular live shows like the Simon Cowell ones that use plenty of projected or LED screen sourced images.

 

Is this the kind of thing you mean?

 

Mind you with BTEC, there's no reason why you cannot import a unit or two from the media suite, and 'swing' them into a performance context. It might be a straight import, or maybe you need to do a MLN?

 

The new unit was designed to allow work being carried out to attract grades by making it a proper part of the course, because experience showed many schools and colleges were taking on new and exciting material, but not getting any kind of credit for it, or getting proper allocated time they could use just for that purpose.

[Brady]

All good as we do teach BTEC., I am thinking of this area more for our FD and BA courses. So we would be devloping the unit(s) and content ourselves.

 

Thanks for the response

[paulears]

I think that I'd probably do what many universities now seem to do, pinch somebody else's and modify it. I remember very well spending ages on an HND unit (it was a sound one) and not being able to think of exactly the right phrase to describe what I wanted - so I made one up (I used 'sonic coherence' - what I really meant was produce sound that sort of works/fits together/just feels right) meaning to go and swap it for something more sensible later on when the right words popped into my head - but I forgot! Bearing in mind I live in East Anglia, I was very surprised a year or so later to see an independently written, different titled module appear that had my 'sonic coherence' phrase in it, for doing exactly what I'd been thinking of. A little more searching showed they'd simply taken an early draft, and used this as the basis of their own unique qualification.

 

 

It does occur to me that taking the source material from a Level 3 or 4 programme's individual units/modules and then pinching the best bits is a pretty sound way of doing what you have in mind. Media has so many crossovers with theatre that this makes sense, yet they're pretty well always treated as alien to each other. Judging by the standard of interviewing and presentation we see from graduates on TV, some kind of presentation/production hybrid would be good. I don't think many of these people even know what open and closed questions even are?