Media students' climb to the top

Three Liverpool Screen School students have won £2,000 in a competition run by leading motoring magazine, Influx Magazine.

Third year BA Media Production students Alex Brabbing, Laura Taylor and Ruth Postlewaite travelled to the Lake District to film the Barbon Hillclimb, a well-known annual hill motor race near Kirkby Lonsdale organised by the Liverpool Motor Club.

The Influxposure competition provided an excellent opportunity for students to gain relevant industry experience and add a current piece of media content to their portfolio.

Ruth Postlewaite commented: “I wanted to push myself as a student filmmaker by taking a project that from start to finish was completely up to me in what I created.

“As a team I think we are really proud of the standard of film we managed to produce, with little experience of filming on location for a project not supervised by tutors.”

The job was highlighted to students by Paula Baines, coordinator for Production Unit Liverpool Screen School (PULSS), a work-focused skills service exclusively available to Screen School students. Influx promoted the competition to universities and PULSS advertised the opportunity to students. Ruth added: “We created a pitch surrounding the climb event in Barbon, then we received an email to say we’d been shortlisted and had five months to produce the film.”

The team borrowed filming equipment for the shoot and despite the torrential rain, the crew filmed main elements of the race and interviews with two of the drivers. Influx were very impressed with the high production value and professional feel of the film.

Ruth concudes: “As well as winning the £2000 cash prize, we have all gained amazing amounts in confidence going into third year and hopefully will be working alongside INFLUX in the future.”