UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two College of Communications classes are collaborating in an effort to promote a webcast and provide real-world experience for students.
COMM 383 Advanced Video Production is producing a live webcast of the School of Theatre’s production of Oscar Wilde's “The Importance of Being Earnest” April 22 at 7:30 p.m., and students in that class have teamed up with students in COMM 473 Public Relations Campaigns, who are trying to attract 5,000 unique viewers to the webcast, which can be found at http://wpsu.org/event/.
The collaboration serves as a win-win: COMM 383, taught by senior lecturer Maria Cabrera-Baukus, receives help reaching potential viewers, and students in COMM 473, taught by lecturer Tara Wyckoff, gain valuable, hands-on experience with their own client and PR campaign.
“Having Tara’s class work with us is a great opportunity for the students because it’s a real project. They get to design a communications campaign and we get promoted,” Cabrera-Baukus said. “I’m really looking forward to see how that changes the outcome in terms of the audience we might have.”
Another goal of Wyckoff’s students is to help garner interest from students in the COMM 383 course in general. In addition, Wyckoff’s class must promote the webcast to a non-local audience, as a complement to ticket sales for the event.
Having promotion for a play webcast is a first for Cabrera-Baukus and her class, which produced a live webcast of Julius Caesar that was staged outdoors on the Old Main steps last year. That webcast could not be promoted beyond campus because of an agreement with the actor’s union. The class produces a live webcast of the Homecoming parade each fall, too.
Wyckoff’s students all have different positions to help promote the show, including campaign tactics, client relations, media relations, research and writing.
“I try to leverage their skills so we have some good quality to work with, but also give them an opportunity to try things that maybe they are still exploring,” said Wyckoff. “This group presented me with a nice cross section of all of those. We rely heavily upon one another. It’s a real team effort.”
The webcast, which will feature a magazine show with pre-produced content and interviews, will feature three cameras and microphones placed around the stage. It will use the available light for the production from the historic Pavilion Theatre. Cabrera-Baukus’ students also take on different roles in her course, including director-producer, assistant director, camera operators, technical director, production assistant and audio operator.
This year, with the play being conducted inside, it presents new challenges and eliminates the chance of bad weather.
"The challenge with this one is that the place is very small,” said Cabrera-Baukus. “The places where the cameras are going to be are not ideal because the cameras cannot be on the floor, obviously. If it’s not on the floor, it’s up because the seats come all the way to the floor. That means that it’s going to be interesting to see how the camera angles work.”
Wyckoff’s class always features a real project and client portion, but it does not always implement the project. This year’s collaboration gives students a unique opportunity to see a project from start to finish, as they will be able to determine if their client’s goal of 5,000 viewers was met.
“I say the same thing like a broken record at the beginning of every semester, which is I foresee my job as helping them become the type of people I would want to hire,” said Wyckoff. “I really mean that. I also tell them in this particular class that this is as close to what your entry-level job is going to be like as I can create given the confines of a 15-week semester. It is. It really is.”