News - Glowing Halo as Lecturer Wins Royal Television Society Award
As part of a team, David Smithers who lectures on several Media courses and also Creative Music Technology at University College Falmouth has won the Royal Television Society (RTS) Craft & Design award 2009/2010, in the Sound - Entertainment and Non Drama category.
The award was presented to the sound team of post production facility, Halo in recognition of the sound design for Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds. This BBC One factual production was broadcast in May 2010 and used high speed cameras to examine the hidden secrets of the world that are trapped by the limits of the naked eye.
David's sound design work was specific to the first episode of the series entitled Speed Limits and included providing the imagined sound effects of a Himalayan Balsam plant firing out seeds at an astonishing rate of 6 metres a second.
One of the film cameras used in the production recorded at one million frames per second causing the visual action to be slowed down by a dramatic rate. If one were simply to match the slow motion images with slow speed audio, the results could be quite uninspiring, producing mostly dull low frequency tones. Instead, David created a unique and inspirational soundscape blending both natural and synthesised sounds aiming for audio that would please the ears as much as the pictures would please the eyes.
"It was terrifically satisfying to have worked on this production and I am honoured that the RTS consider myself and the other highly talented members of the sound team, worthy to win this coveted award," said David. "There is a great deal of crossover as to where the teaching of sound design can stretch, from Digital Media, Film and Television Production to Creative Music Technology and Fine Art and it is particularly stimulating for me to begin to imagine facilitating the collaboration of our students between schools on projects within this area."
The Jury "hailed the winning entry as an example of the very best in creative sound design. The winning team decided that no sound element should be used more than once, and although some might call this 'utter madness', it resulted in a glorious triumph."
David' success follows the success of students from the BA(Hons) Digital Media course who, for the fourth consecutive year, have won Student South West Royal Television Society (SW RTS) Awards.
Sarah Thorpe, Rebecca Bradbury, Stevie-Jo Fowler, Alexandra Beahan who graduated this summer won the Factual Award for their documentary Addiction: The Forgotten People that studies the effect of addict's behaviour on family and friends.
Ciaran McEntee, Kelly Merchant, Holly Horseman, Robert Walker, James Doherty won the Fiction Award with their film, State of Mind. This drama tells a powerful and beautifully executed story of a young man's mental illness and explores how such illness affects young people.
The announcements were made during the Breaking into Media Student Careers Event in Plymouth on Monday 15 November 2010. Both these pieces will now be entered into the regional finals.
Paul Inman, Head of Media, said; "The Skillset Media Academy at University College Falmouth continues to develop some of the very best digital media graduates in the UK. The partnership working between staff and students encourages fresh, lively ideas and concepts that can be exploited in a commercial context."
The RTS Craft and Design Awards cover the huge variety of skills and processes involved in programme production, from editing to lighting, and costume design to digital effects. The Awards ceremony is held every November in central London and the Committee is chaired by Paul Jackson. The RTS Craft & Design Awards 2009/2010 were presented on Wednesday 24 November 2010 at The Savoy, Strand, London and were hosted by Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood.
David's episode can be viewed here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rmrln
David joined UCF as a part-time lecturer in 2007. He divides his time between running his business Valhalla Audio', from which he conducts his work as a film and television sound designer, and as an academic, lecturing in post-production sound and field sound recording.
Demand for David's work in film drama has seen him complete work on over fourteen episodes of 'Silent Witness' for the BBC and two series of ITV's 'The Brief'. Recently, he has worked on several BBC4 docu-features including 'Hancock and Joan', which was BAFTA nominated for Best Single Drama in 2008, and 'Lennon Naked' - a biopic on the life of John Lennon and the flagship drama of this summer's 'Fatherhood' season of films.
For further information about Media & Performance courses at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 211077.
UCF is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name. The University College has two campuses - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of Exeter).
UCF's merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Dance, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Dartington-based courses have now relocated to an impressive, high-specification £19M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus, which launched this October. The ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) Convergence Programme invested £12,266,667 in this development which will prepare performance students for success within the creative industries. The South West Regional Development Agency's Single Pot Fund contributed a further £3M, with the remainder being invested by the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Strategic Development Fund.
The Performance Centre is the latest phase in UCF's ambition to create a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unrivalled in the South West.