For most of the last two years we have been confined to remote production of content for all our online degrees.
We’ve made a virtue out of this necessary constraint, thanks to the hard work and imagination of our production teams and our academic partners. We’ve couriered mobile recording kits around the country, and to far-flung shores. We’ve thought more deeply about what kind of media you need for what kinds of learning. We’ve empowered people to take control of the technology behind their online teaching. We’ve made do, and maintained quality, and sharpened our pedagogic wits in the process.
It’s a bit like painting, where a restricted palette forces you to make creative choices (or the oulipo movement in French literature, or Dogme 95 in film).
But it’s good to be back filming, with the green screen and the autocue and lenses and booms and various pointy and screwy bits. And with the people, most of all.
Our production studio is in the basement of Senate House. We’re fond if it. It’s our cave. But it isn’t Covid-secure and we can’t use it. So we are setting up in spare offices and filming where we can.
We have grand plans, though, for a new studio, in dedicated space, which will make a big difference to the service we can offer and to the capacity we have for producing high end online learning content.
So long as the pandemic allows, we’ll be moving to our new base soon, and thereafter we hope to make something truly special there. Stay tuned, and thanks for bearing with us during the guerilla operation of the last two years. We’ll still make use of couriered mobile production kits – we want to keep what works – but it’s good to be back for the main event, and to see our collaborators in ‘meatspace‘.
