Creative industries students from Forth Valley College working under mentors from BBC Scotland have produced a live television programme and live web stream of a special Christmas lecture at Codebase Stirling – which took place on Wednesday 12 December.
The production crew – on the Audio Engineering Society (Scottish Section) Christmas Lecture 2018, titled Game music, bit-by-bit by Dr Kenny McAlpine - included HND Media, BA (Hons) Digital Media, NC Media and HND Sound Production students from Forth Valley College, mentored by industry freelancers and BBC Scotland staff. FVC Media Lecturer Joanna MacIntyre was also heavily involved, recruiting and organising students for the roles of production managers, floor assistants, camera operators and vision mixing.
The Audio Engineering Society is the only professional society devoted exclusively to audio technology. Founded in the United States in 1948, the AES has grown to become an international organisation that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research.
Colin McGeoch, Curriculum Manager in FVC’s Department of Creative Industries and AES Scotland Committee Member, said: “Every year, the AES Scottish Section produce a Christmas Lecture in association with BBC Scotland and a host educational institution. This year, for the first time, Forth Valley College is the host institution.
“The lecture was produced as a full live television production, with a crew comprising students from Forth Valley College mentored by production and engineering staff from BBC Scotland and other industry professionals. The studio audience was an invited audience of S5 and S6 pupils from local feeder schools.”
The event gave students extremely valuable real life experience working on a live television production supervised by industry professionals and consisted of several weeks of meetings and planning, followed by three days' work on site: Day one was technical rigging and system checks (Monday 10 December), day two (Tuesday 11) was rehearsals with day three being the live production itself which was also live streamed on the College's youtube channel. The production will subsequently be available for streaming on demand.
The Christmas Lecture: Game Music, Bit-by-Bit explains how interactive game soundtracks work. Beginning with the sound chip music of early video game consoles like Pong and home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, the lecture will look at how video game sound evolved from synthesised bleeps and bloops to today’s high-quality production tracks and deconstruct the techniques that composers use to turn pre-recorded music into something that is interactive, and that can be rearranged and recomposed in real-time.
Photos by Innes McVey and Natasha Gray.