A team of four students have won this year’s Student Video Competition, with their winning entry impressing judges so much it could not be distinguished from videos made by professionals.
The winning entry is now featured on the University’s homepage and YouTube channel.
Run by the University’s Communications team, the competition invited entries promoting the University to prospective students. The winners received a cash prize of £250 and an expenses-paid trip to the Leeds Media Alumni event in London in November 2013.
The winning film, by undergraduates Catherine Carswell, Christian Geldart, Danny Robertson and Rebecca Webb, explores a ‘day in the life of a student’, showing a selection of the educational and co-curricular activities, and the sports and societies that students enjoy at Leeds. It takes the viewer chronologically through the day, telling the story of three students on different degree courses.
Professor Vivien Jones, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Student Education, who presented the prize to the winning entrants said, “The video is a visually-stunning reflection of life and study here at Leeds, successfully capturing how students on different courses, from different backgrounds and with different interests share their university experience with one another. The professional quality of the video is a credit to the skills and hard work of Catherine, Christian, Danny and Rebecca and the quality of their education here.”
The students are all in the final year of Cinema and Photography or Communications undergraduate courses.
One of the winners, Danny Robertson, who studies Cinema and Photography said, “We’re so grateful to have been chosen as the winners and particularly honoured to have been compared with professionals. The competition has given us the chance to showcase our work on a website seen by over 200,000 people a month.”
“It took a lot of planning and discussion to reach a decision on just how much and what we could cram into three minutes of video. We hope that the final video is a good reflection of the unpredictable and diverse life of a University of Leeds student – there really never is a dull moment!” said Catherine Carswell, who is studying for a BA in Communications.
The students attributed their win to a lot of hard work, determination and persistence – often filming in between lectures and dissertation work, whenever they had a free moment to spare. Rebecca Webb said, “It was difficult fitting the filming in between our different lectures, but we have worked together on previous projects and know we work well as a team. This made the shoot pretty straightforward for us.”
“When we were making the video we thought about what attracted us to study at the University of Leeds and the range of activities you can do here was a massive draw for us. That’s how we decided to do ‘a day in the life of a student’ as a way to show even a little of what our University has to offer, the stuff beyond lectures too” said Christian Geldart, who is also in his final year studying Cinema and Photography.
Catherine, Christian, Danny and Rebecca will be using the prize money to improve the production of their final year projects and the video work they do around their degree.
For more information
Visit the University of Leeds YouTube channel