Reeling Ahead with Longley Park! by Ashleigh Withall-Prince

The ‘Showreel’ project is in full flow working alongside local college students to produce a film, highlighting all that’s brilliant about Hallam Volunteering, and the achievements of the volunteers and local college students. It has offered a fantastic opportunity to develop film – making and editing skills to the team and students to produce a high quality film due to be premiered at a celebratory evening for volunteering, ‘The Event’ on March 24th.
Hallam volunteers are currently working with Longley Park Sixth Form students. The students from the college have all got some previous media experience, and are having a great time, building on their skills and forming a rapport with the volunteers.

Project Leader Matthew Voyse, who was once a student at Longley Park said: “We have a positive environment when filming and we try to make sure we have fun. The students are easy to work with, because they all do media, so they pretty much know what they are doing. They are really enthusiastic about working on the project.”

Shooting for the film began on 10th February, and is set to continue at least once a week, possibly more, in the weeks leading up to The Event. Initially, Showreel had 8 spots available for the students however, due to popular demand they have taken on 12, and it’s easy to understand why the project is so popular. You could say the sessions have bee somewhat of a ‘sell-out’!

The concept of the filming is based loosely in the style of TV programmes. The filming for the volunteer project ‘Season It’ was done in the style of Gordon Ramsey’s ‘F Word’. One of the students was pretending to cook like Gordon whilst conducting interviews, although they had to restrain from Gordon’s infamous swearing and fiery temper!

Matthew is extremely happy with the progression of the project at present, he said: “Luckily everything is running smoothly so far, I have a bunch of enthusiastic students and a great bunch of volunteers, which is all a project leader could ask for.” Well done to the Showreel team, we cannot wait to see this blockbuster!!