Media students make films to help children's charity

Nescot’s Media students have made a set of promotional videos for free to help a children’s charity with their fundraising.

Student’s on the university-level HND course produced, filmed and edited three two-minute videos for The Children’s Trust, as well as a 10-second teaser for social media.

The students filmed on location at the organisation’s headquarters in Tadworth, including interviewing a volunteer who stayed at the charity following a brain injury.

“This has been a really interesting project for the students to work on, and they’ve learnt a lot from the experience,” said Louise Gaskin, Nescot’s Head of Sound and Visual Arts.

“We have approached this as an extracurricular project, so the students volunteered to be involved and did all the work for free and in their own time because they wanted to support the charity.

“They’ve learnt a lot from the process, including what it’s like to work with a ‘real’ client, and that experience will benefit them hugely in their future careers.”

The students had a visit from a Community Fundraiser from The Children’s Trust in September, who gave them the brief and answered their questions about the charity.

They then spent time researching charities’ promotional videos and thinking about different ways of putting messages across in ways that would appeal to the target audience.

Each student was given a specific role, such as camera operator, producer or editor, and they visited the trust to interviews staff and spoke to a young woman who had been helped by the charity about the support she received as a child.

“It has been a really educational experience,” said HND student Tom Kershaw, who was Director of Photography during the project.

“Every student learns something different on every project, but it’s usually something technical like different ways of lighting a scene or what it’s like in a different production role.

“With this project we experienced working directly with a client from a brief, and because we were doing it in addition to our course we also got experience of managing multiple timelines.”

Chloe Edwards, Senior Community Fundraising Manager, said: “This was a great opportunity for two local organisations to work together.

“We hope that the students gained some valuable experience. We really appreciate their efforts in producing these videos, thank you to everyone involved.”

The Children’s Trust will use the films for fundraising across their website and social media, and ambassadors will play them at school assemblies to help tell children about the work they do to help young people with brain injury and their families.

The organisation provides a residential school for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties and rehabilitation services for young people with an acquired brain injury, as well as a community service.

Intense rehabilitation programmes range from two to six months and include therapies ranging from physiotherapy to music and art-based activities as well as psychological support.

Nescot supports The Children’s Trust through extensive fundraising each year, including a unit run by Level 1 Computing students in which they make and sell Christmas cards.

This year the students raised £700 for the charity in just three weeks by a combination of card sales and raffles.