On the second (Spring) term of this now fading academic year, the pandemic lockdown of LCC presented challenges that at first sight felt insurmountable. This was after all our COLLABORATIVE UNIT! But many students were locked down alone or in tiny groups. We were due to make 12 in-house studio films, with full-on production crews, made from scripts written on the first (autumn) term. We were now locked out of the college and our studio spaces, making that impossible! However, rising to the challenge and sticking wit the theme of Dystopia, I got students to write new scripts or adapt existing ones for LOCKDOWN FILMING. This proved to be a huge success! Students achieved the successful, collaborative production of 29 short films! Amazing!
But ... what became very apparent through the process was just how this expanded range of opportunity fro production had a super-positive effect on diversity and representation across the board. During both crew (group) director one-to-one tutorials, it became very apparent that female directors and producers dominated these productions. Furtehrmore, it was refreshing to see that of 29 films made, we had 20 female directors, 9 of which were BAME, 1 of which was SE Asian (international). Of the male directors ... 3 were SE Asian (international) and 3 were open-gay (LBGTQ). I created a quick chart to record this for future reference. Can be found here:
This did not take into account female producers, etc who vastly (as usual) outnumbered male, across all ethnic groups.
With students again formally interviewing people for jobs / crew roles, this diversity and rep expanded into Term 3 (the final summer term) when of 8 films produced in-house, plus 2 live TV shows, directors were split as follows:-
Male 4 (two LBGTQ)
Female 4 (two BAME)
TV Studio directors x 2 : 1 female.
The main takeaway from this is that to widen diversity and representation on a course such as ours, where key creative roles are available to all, the more projects (films) we make, the wider and greater the opportunities.
This spirit of inclusivity is a true testament to the student body of our course. The crew roles are peer selected by a formal job interview process. They clearly choose those people they feel will be best for the job. They are our future!
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