May 30, 2008

Film students intern at one of the nation's largest music festivals

Tommy Beardmore
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"This year our students will play a bigger role in the festival's largest act, the stadium show, as well as handling nearly every aspect of the video production at smaller Riverfront stage," said Bill Callison, manager for academic outreach at the Hall of Music Productions, who teaches the internship course for third- and fourth-year students in the Film/Video Studies program. "The students will help install and operate one of the largest video displays in the world, including using cutting-edge technology that has never been attempted in a live production. The invitation to expand our responsibilities at the festival demonstrates the professional caliber these students are capable of in the live video production industry.

"The students also will participate in every aspect of video production from load-in to load-out. And, more than 100,000 fans attending the festival will see the student's video when projected on the large video screens."

Faith Hill, Taylor Swift, Randy Travis, Gretchen Wilson and Phil Vassar are among the 400 country artists and celebrities at this year's festival. This is the fifth time Purdue's Film/Video Studies program students have interned at the festival.

The course is offered in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts and Hall of Music Productions.

"Hall of Music Productions is the university's event production company, which provides audio, lighting, staging, video and event management services to a variety of campus-affiliated events," said Stephen Hall, director of Hall of Music Productions.

During the internship, the students will be involved in many aspects of the production, including engineering, building giant light-emitting diode (LED) video screens, operating cameras and video graphics computers, managing cables and assisting the international press in receiving an audio and video feed of the event. Students represent majors in film/video studies, computer graphic technology and electrical engineering. Many of these also filmed Pope Benedict XVI's papal Mass at Yankee Stadium during his New York City visit and assisted with filming the Dalai Lama's visit to Purdue in October.

Besides video production and editing, the Film/Video Studies course offerings include scriptwriting, literature and the visual arts, well as film histories from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Latin-America, Russia, China, Japan and Morocco. Students also explore film and media criticism.

"The Film/Video Studies specialty serves more than 80 majors, and continues to grow by leaps and bounds," said Patricia Hart, chair and professor of Spanish.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Sources: Bill Callison, (765) 404-4393, billc@purdue.edu

Stephen Hall, director of Hall of Music Productions, (765) 494-3937, sdhall@purdue.edu

Patricia Hart, interim chair of Film/Video Studies, (765) 494-3857, phart@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

PHOTO CAPTION:
Tommy Beardmore, a Purdue University senior for Lafayette, Ind., films a performance at the 2007 Country Music Association's Music Festival in Nashville, Tenn. Sixteen students will participate in a summer internship with entertainment video professionals during the association's June 5-8 annual music festival. This is the fifth time Purdue's Film/Video Studies program students have interned at the festival. The course is offered in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts and Hall of Music Productions.  (Photo provided)

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