Film/Media: Skills & Insight – Making Documentaries To Make A Difference With Julian Sturdy From University of East Anglia

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In this Film/Media session, Julian Sturdy, a multi-award-winning documentary maker and leading university academic, will run an interactive skills and insight workshop for students on Making Documentaries to Make a Difference.

The session offers an overview of documentary making – including the skills, knowledge and experience required to pitch your ideas to an editor.

Session objectives:

• To provide students with an insight into what documentary making involves and advise on the key skills that sets it apart from films and news.
• To demonstrate the importance of documentaries in making a difference to people’s lives. Giving a voice to the under-represented and exposing wrong-doing by holding authority to account.
• To give students tips on how to pursue a long-term interest in a career in film-making.

We will cover:

• What makes a good documentary?
• Sources of ideas
• How to be convincing to get your idea commissioned by the editor
• Examples of impactful documentaries
• A pathway of self-learning to improve your chances of breaking into the industry.

The session will develop skills and approaches to support students in their Film/Media studies and future aspirations.

Lecturer Profile: Julian Sturdy is a multi-award-winning documentary maker. He lectures in Broadcast and Multimedia Journalism at the University of East Anglia. He runs two modules at the university teaching MA and BA students to make documentaries.

Julian was Investigations Editor at BBC East, and ran the Inside Out team, commissioning and exec producing documentaries around the world. He has made television documentaries for network BBC One and BBC Two and half-hour radio news documentaries for BBC Radio 4. He’s a winner of a Royal Television Society award, National health care journalism of the year, and five-times nominated in the British Journalism Awards.

Our events are designed so that a group of students can take part from a classroom or students and teachers can take part as individuals, either from school or from home. This means that sessions will continue irrespective of possible school closures.

As a live, participative event, this session will not be recorded but slides and other resources will be shared after the event, where available.

Suitable for: Year 12 & 13 students (and equivalent) studying, or with a possible interest in studying, Film/Media and related disciplines.

Preparation/Pre-Reading: Students may wish to consider the topic in advance, with respect to challenges they may face or questions they have. Students can also think about questions they have about studying Film/Media at university level.

The IT Setup: The event will be run on Bluejeans (similar to Zoom) and participants will be able to join using laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. If you are joining as a school group, we recommend connecting with one device and projecting on to a whiteboard. You will be able to interact with the university via a microphone and/or typed comments and questions. Full details will be sent to those who have registered (see below) prior to the event.

Booking a Place: This is free for schools and colleges. If you would like to take part in this event, please register your interest using the link to the registration form below:

Register here