UAL Film & TV Production students Owen Snell and Jacob Trotter launched their ambitious FMP project this month Northern Sound a live Eurovision style contest that was produced, broadcasted and filmed on campus at our film studio in Newport Road.

Speaking of the making of the project, Jacob said “I’ve always been inspired by the production of Eurovision and how each year they find new ways to push technology and create some of the most advanced stage designs you’ll ever see, so doing something like this has been a career goal of mine for a while, and when our lecturer Katt jokingly said that it would be fun for someone to do Eurovision in college, we set to work planning it 6 months in advance! Northern Sound is kind of our ‘go-out-with-a-bang’ production to finish off the course in style and set a new benchmark for the biggest student production in Northern School of Art history, the biggest production so far (not student led) being the Outstanding LED Installation a few weeks ago.”

Owen commented, “With Northern Sound it has been a wonderful project trying together to build a live broadcast from the ground up using all of our skills and trying to get everyone involved from the rest of the film course and more people all over college. Over all both projects (northern sounds and the Ofsted installation) have been phenomenal and I am so happy to be working on them with Jacob who is an incredible and kind person.”

Jacob and Owen worked with local artists to develop a line up for the event Jacob commented, “we put out open casting calls to any local artists that would like to be involved and have reached out to some directly” The two students also worked with production company Artistic Solutions, Jacob said “Artistic Solutions were the official sponsors of the whole project, and they provided all of the additional infrastructure we needed to run the project such as screens, cable, lighting and audio. We met with them 10 weeks before we did the shoot, and they were an integral part of the whole operation and kept in the loop about everything and assisted with some logistical decisions.”

Speaking of the event Jacob said “The prep for this production, in terms of actually getting the kit ready to go in the studio started 3 weeks before production when we were able to do a test build of the stage in a warehouse to get an idea of scale and to see what it would actually look like before jumping straight into production, allowing us to iron out any issues in advance. The actual equipment prep started the next week with putting together cable cases and other bits before two weeks later being delivered to site here and being set up. The build took a day and a half with some teething issues but nothing too major and came together nicely ready to go live on the Friday.”

“One of the challenges we had was space constraints. The initial build we did was about 2.5m too wide to fit in the studio so we reduced it down massively by ordering some new parts and infrastructure which would on paper make it fit into the studio, however we were given measurements that included the width of the cupboards meaning at first we were literally wall to wall with the structure, we managed to reduce the width but at a cost to height, which still looked okay but would’ve look a lot better as tall as it was originally.”

UAL Film Lecturer Katt Mudd commented “Jacob and Owen pitched this concept to me for a previous project in October – although too grand of an idea for the project in October we got the green light for them to create this concept for their Final Major Project. With support from Artistic Solutions – the students transformed the TV Studio into it’s own mini Eurovision set combining their passions and skillset to create a fantastic live show. Both Owen and Jacob were absolute professionals from idea development to creation and it has been so exciting to watch them create something they have been passionate about for such a long time. Both students should be incredibly proud of what they created – as I am incredibly proud of them!”

Jacob said “I’m quite relieved that it’s all over. It was super fun to work on and I would 100% do it all again but in a bigger space with more to work with. Our end goal was simply to just do it and see how it came out, which is exactly what we did, and we are both quite happy with how it came out. There were a couple of small details that could’ve been ironed out with more time but with the studio being a shared space we didn’t want to take up a full week. From the feedback we’ve received the general consensus is that we could’ve marketed it more and that people would like us to do it again, although we are not sure what that would look like yet!”

If you are interested in studying Film at college-level make sure you check out our UAL Extended Diploma in Film & TV Production course page. Find out more about the skills and opportunities offered to students on this dynamic and industry focused pathway.