Eleven undergraduate students from the Bachelor of Communication (Media) program have now commenced work on their remote internships with the short film streaming platform Atlasshorts. The remote internships initiative was established by the Media program and Atlasshorts to help those students whose original work attachments were affected by the COVID-19 lockdown.
Media students and Atlasshorts team hard at work-from-home
The students will spend 30 hours each working with Atlasshorts to secure metadata for their catalogues, as the platform has been taken up by a number of new institutions now delivering media courses online due to the lockdown. The students will also be learning about film distribution, streaming services, and e-meeting those institutions who have subscribed to the platform to discover how it’s being used.
A number of Bachelor of Communication (Media) student works are now streaming on Atlasshorts (formerly Exile Shorts). This is the result of 18 months of collaboration between Media and the Atlasshorts team. Six student works have been licensed, and many more recent Media studio productions and archival works are being considered for publication.
RMIT now shares the platform with esteemed Australian and international institutions including AFTRS, Ringling College of Art + Design, the British Film Institute, USC Cinematic Arts, and the National Film Board of Canada. The Media and Cinema teams are also making use of the platform in the classroom, as it streams quality short works from recent and historic filmmakers.
1) From April to June 2020, Atlasshorts and the B.Comm(Media) program will be offering remote internship opportunities to assist students affected by work attachment cancellations due to COVID-19.
2) Later in Semester 1, guests from Atlasshorts will join us for a live webinar on streaming media, film distribution, and the Australian media landscape.
Our friends at Exile Entertainment are offering two intern positions for RMIT Media students to assist in marketing campaigns for the release of feature films including the Venice premiering West of Sunshine and upcoming documentary Green Light, as well as new productions. Exile Entertainment is an independent Film & TV production/distribution business based in Melbourne.
This internship opportunity has a PR focus, but us savvy Media bods can cut across most disciplines — if interested, send a message to Victoria Baldwin: victoria.baldwin@globalreconciliation.org
Public Relations Officer (volunteer); Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship – Environmental Care
Key Duties:
– Creating public relations content (especially in relation to the Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Award)
– Creating and distributing social media content
– Attending weekly meetings
RMIT’s Codesign studio with Lentara UnitingCare responds to social issues they face and has also led to the ongoing employment of two graduates and one third-year student.
Graduate Georgia Verrells has come back to RMIT to assist current students in the studio.
The Lentara Codesign studio is a cross-disciplinary collaboration in the School of Media and Communication with an agency of one of the largest community service based not-for-profit organisations in Australia.
Lentara UnitingCare is at the forefront of social innovation, facilitating a wide range of services, including asylum seeker housing, emergency relief programs and family services.
Lecturer Dr Seth Keen, who leads the studio with Dr Neal Haslem, said the partnership between Lentara UnitingCare and RMIT Communication Design and Media students was established in 2016 to directly facilitate the development of social innovation and entrepreneurship through codesign, responding to the social issues faced daily by this organisation.
“Last year, students developed creative and digital responses to a range of Lentara projects, including their annual Winter Appeal, Asylum Seeker Housing campaign, Men’s Shed, a Shower Bus for the homeless, and developing store identity branding for their recycled clothing initiative,” he said.
The studio won a Dean’s Award for Integrated Scholarship in 2016 and it has also resulted in part-time jobs for three 2016 students at Lentara – Blake Fullwood and Georgia Verrells from the Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) and Evan Bryce Riddle from the Bachelor of Communication (Media).
Graduate Bryce Riddle is working as a Digital, Print and Communications Assistant within Lentara’s media and communications department, undertaking a range of creative and strategic tasks, including digital content development, video creation, social media management, web updates and news writing.
“It all began through participation in the RMIT collaborative studio in 2016, where the students had executed some fantastic projects that Lentara didn’t want to let go to waste, so they decided that they wanted to hire one of the students to continue the work and implement it,” Riddle said.
“Three of us interviewed, and I guess we all brought different skill-sets that could assist Lentara, so they brought us all on board!
“That was initially a 12 week internship, and we’ve gone on to become members of the team, which has been a wonderful opportunity and great transition from university life into the professional world.”
Keen said it has been amazing to watch students in the studio last year return with their Lentara manager as employed graduates and present to the studio, and work with students on 2017 projects as guides and mentors.
“I could not have hoped for a better outcome in regards to the integration of scholarship with industry practices,” he said.
From left to right; Gemma Halloran from Lentara UnitingCare with Evan Bryce Riddle, Blake Fullwood and Georgia Verrells.
Gemma Halloran, who is the Marketing and Communications Coordinator of Lentara said that as an organization they broke new ground for their agency in 2016 by collaborating with RMIT and furthered this with the placement of three students in paid internships at Lentara.
“The quality of the work that the RMIT studio developed and the high standard of career readiness in each of the internships has led to them becoming permanent assets in the Lentara marketing and communications team,” she said.
“It is wonderful that they will now have a chance to reflect on the work in the 2017 studio collaboration, to provide insight and to support their RMIT peers to work through the real world design problems we as an organization face. “
This year in the collaborative studio, the students will be delving into a broad range of projects needing digital communication strategies, designing print and media campaigns, and developing identity and network strategies.
Riddle said that together with his fellow Lentara staff, he will be assisting the RMIT groups and trying to provide extra insight to help them reach further with their projects and goals.
“Since I experienced a similar journey last year, I have an understanding of the thought processes required to tackle the issues presented and additionally have inside knowledge on Lentara and its services,” he said.
RMIT students had a chance to work nad/or observe behind the scenes through placements in the new ABC drama Newton’s Law.
Some scenes were shot at RMIT’s city campus in the former Melbourne Magistrates’ Court
Students in the School of Media and Communication had an exciting work integrated learning opportunity on the set of the eight-part drama series produced by Every Cloud Productions in association with the ABC, Screen Australia and Film Victoria.
Created by the team behind Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,Deb Cox and Fiona Eagger, Newton’s Law stars Claudia Carvan as a suburban solicitor who returns to the Bar.
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Co-producer Anna Molyneaux and Development Manager Katherine Fry said Every Cloud Productions is keen to support the development of creative talent, particularly those based in Victoria, by offering students access to a hands-on experience in departments relevant to their studies.
Actor Claudia Karvan as Josephine Newton in Newton’s Law
Maggie O’Shea, who is studying a Bachelor of Communication (Media), was offered an internship in the production office during the shooting of the show.
“Maggie worked with our production manager both in the office and on set, observing and assisting in the many practical areas that keep a production ticking, from attending casting and production meetings to assisting with the daily administration that is essential throughout the production process,” co-producer Anna Molyneaux said.
Professor Lisa French, Deputy Dean (Media), said Every Cloud Productions is leading the industry in efforts to redress the gender imbalance; the company has more women than men in key roles and actively recruits women.
“This is unusual in the film and television industry where women are generally the minority across most roles,” French said.
Some scenes were shot at RMIT’s city campus in the former Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, giving media students on campus the opportunity to observe first-hand prime Australian television drama being shot literally next door to their classrooms.
RMIT’s School of Media and Communication is excited to be one of the Australian partners chosen by Intel’s Global Production Labs (a division of ‘Agency Inside’, the in-house creative and production group of this major tech company) to participate in a paid internships scheme in the San Francisco Bay area (which also includes fully subsidized housing). Internships will be based in the areas of producing, director of photography/shooting, offline editorial, vfx an and audio (sound design, music supervision, recording). Interns will work for three months in a team of 6-8 production specialists and have a chance to hone their production skills while learning the structure and workflow of a traditional ad agency and global corporation. They will also be introduced to leaders from multiple Intel departments and Silicon Valley partners and industry leaders.
The School was lucky enough to have Intel representative, Lisa Effress (Executive Producer of Mentorship, IGPL), recently offer an overview of the new scheme and answer questions.
Applications for the upcoming September and December 2016 intakes close on 1st June 2016. Interested current RMIT media students students and recent graduates (1-2 years out) should contact BComm Media Program Manager, brian.morris@rmit.edu.au for more information including the application form. Good luck to all those who apply!
