When I read ‘MediaCity’ on the itinerary, I did not expect it to be such a literal description of my birthday setting.
A jam-packed bus sang Happy Birthday to me and rode us from Liverpool into Manchester for the day and a night’s stay. We walked into a complex of buildings that included part of the University of Salford, the BBC, ITV, restaurants, grassy lounge areas, small gardens, the Imperial War Museum. The whole area is a converted dockyard and includes a walkway along the bay where I got to sit and reflect on how lucky I am to spend my 27th birthday here.
The morning started with a tour and a lecture at the University of Salford. This particular campus building housed their School of Arts and Media and focuses on subjects like digital design and film and broadcast production.
The tour was lead by Dr. Annabelle Waller, Director of Broadcast Media. She showed us TV studios, a radio studio, and control rooms, and an incredibly interesting Maker Space with materials and a 3D printer for students to turn ideas for props or monsters into reality. I haven’t taken the opportunity to indulge in the video production and broadcast side of my Journalism major yet, and although I found the equipment fascinating, I wish I was more educated in these areas so I could appreciate it that much more.
There is a lot of good synergy between the students and the professional media going on around them. These students can literally finish their education and walk down the street into a job in the field. The University of Salford and Point Park have a partnership and I am tickled at the thought of pursuing an opportunity to study here.
There was a horrendous technical issue with the audio system in the classroom we gathered in for Dr. Waller’s presentation. It was at that point that I realized that there was some sort of technical issue at every media visit. I find the trend amusing.
Dr. Waller gave us interesting information about virtual reality’s potential to really infiltrate the future of media. She provided examples of how it has been used as a form of Journalism and entertainment, as well as a political tool.
She called it “immersive media” It’s an immensely successful way to guide a narrative, to tell a story, and to fully engage your audience.
This is quite possibly the future of media, a redefining point in history for media, and I get to witness it.
After lunch was a tour of the BBC. I realized that this was a commercialized tour that anyone could buy tickets to, most likely tailored for all ages, with time slots and group deal ticket packages online; not something that Point Park used its connections to arrange.
I didn’t fuss over that for long when we walked into a building with a freaking Tardis. I am a Whovian and I let out a squeal. I did the same in the presence of two Dalecks.
We got to see different studios, including the one for BBC Radio 6. The studio contained impressive equipment, including their database of over 29 million songs. We also stopped into different studios where different television programs are filmed, one of which had a floor painted with paint that could be vacuumed up, a small fact that seemed to fascinate all of us present. The tour concluded with an interactive look at where BBC Breakfast is filmed, a morning news program. Students got to sit on set, read from a teleprompter, and report on the weather in front of a green screen.
Then, they sang Happy Birthday to me again, and this time, I got best wishes from the BBC.
Best. Birthday. EVER.