CTEC digital media students were recently treated to a masterclass in documentary production, led by Executive Producer at Woodcut Media, Jinal Patel. This was an exciting and fantastic opportunity for our students to experience the world of a real producer that has been involved in a range of products for the likes of the BBC, National Geographic and Netflix.  Programmes range from factual entertainment (Fiennes: Return to the Nile), to the paranormal (World’s Scariest Hauntings), as well as a range of crime-focussed documentaries.

The aim of the masterclass was to help students on their creative journey in documentary production.  Students are currently completing a project for the Community Matters Partnership Project where they must plan and produce a short documentary targeted at young teens that centres around the concept of either resilience or teamwork.

Jinal provided an exclusive insight into documentary production including research, location recces, getting good contributors and experts and meeting a distributor’s deadline.  As part of the session, students had the opportunity to seek Jinal’s advice on their own documentaries, as well as find out about ways to get into the media industry.

Rachel Beasley, Curriculum Manager of vocational media, commented, “We are so lucky to have a real industry professional visit us and give our students an insight into their world.  Jinal was so informative and her work is inspirational.  The students now have lots of ideas for how to create the perfect story for their own documentary productions.”

Students now have two months to produce their documentaries, and the hope is that work will be sent to Jinal for her expert feedback.