Participants of a five-day course in media creation, held at EurAV’s studio and training facility in Drogheda, have graduated with flying colours.
The course, funded by Coimisíun na Meán and EurAV, looked at digital content creation from concept to distribution, covering both professional equipment use and ‘guerrilla’ filming, using no and low budget hacks to achieve professional results. The training, run with two groups of 10 people over two days per week, also involved less exciting but equally important areas such as music copyright, talent release forms and location permissions. Participants also examined the pros and cons of AI in media – a technology that has grown ubiquitous in recent months.
“It was a brand new course, so I’m delighted that it has been received so well,” said head trainer, film-maker Declan Cassidy. “It’s a really interesting time in Ireland’s media landscape with traditional media struggling to re-invent itself and social media becoming the go-to place for information among many. At EurAV we believe that community media – grass roots content creation where individuals and groups can tell their stories first hand – is the answer to a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that we’re having to deal with. With AI, it has become so sophisticated and convincing that society needs a source of information that it can trust, and community media fills that role.”
EurAV is developing a ‘hybrid media’ model where, on the one platform, people can access the same piece of information in text, video or audio format, according to their preferences.
“Our idea is to provide a platform where all sorts of groups and individuals can distribute their information to the public. Training those interested in creating media helps to ensure that the content on this platform will be of a decent standard,” explained Declan.
The feedback from the first pool of graduates has been highly positive.
“We’ll be reporting back to Coimisiún na Meán on the success of the initiative,” said Declan. “I’m very hopeful that they’ll give us further support to run further training. We had 164 applicants for the first 20 places so the interest is definitely there, and given the positive reaction, we’re certainly keen to continue with this programme. Those completing the course have also suggested additional training in areas like editing, social media or sound, so we’re examining the possibility of short, intense courses to run alongside the longer one.”
Those interested in putting their names down for future courses should drop an email to “contact @ eurav.eu”.
