Blackmagic Design partners with Swinburne to broadcast Pause Fest 2020

A team of Swinburne Vocational Education and Training (VET) alumni volunteered their videography and production expertise to lead and coordinate the live broadcast, filming and editing of business innovation festival, Pause Fest 2020.

Working alongside their former Swinburne teachers and mentors, 35 recent graduates from Swinburne’s Advanced Diploma of Screen and Media – Film and Television formed a production team to live broadcast the three-day event, held at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre.

The Melbourne-based digital cinema company, Blackmagic Design, partnered with Swinburne for the event, donating a suite of their professional broadcasting equipment. 

After the event, the equipment will be used by Swinburne, Department of Business, Design Media and ICT to train VET students studying in our the suite of Screen and Media suite of courses.

The team from Blackmagic Design worked with the Swinburne production team on Pause Fest 2020 and says graduates with real-world experience are already ahead of the pack when it comes to being job-ready.

‘Now, like never before, video content has become one of the most important communications platforms for growing Australian enterprises’ said the Blackmagic team lead. ‘It’s been great to work alongside Swinburne on Pause Fest, seeing the next generation of video communications specialists applying their skills in a practical and live setting’.

The festival for innovators and creators

Described as ‘Australia’s SXSW’, Pause Fest celebrates and explores creativity, innovation, business and startups from around the world. The festival was founded and is directed by Swinburne alum, George Hedon.

Pause Fest is built on the mantra of ’pause to learn, network and grow’, and celebrated its 10th year running this year. Local startups turned household names Canva and Zero Latency both launched at Pause Fest, while Tesla showcased its first Model S at the festival. 

This year’s event was the biggest yet, attracting more than 2,200 attendees. Over 60 international and local speakers shared their know-how, including innovators at Netflix, Google, Adobe, Dropbox, Guardian Australia, ACMI, Adidas and Trello.

Hands-on experience with the latest video production technology

The Swinburne Pause Fest production crew of producers, directors, vision switchers, camera operators, sound recordists, runners and editors managed all video production, social media live streaming, and content creation for the festival.

‘As the event rolled live, every moment of the team’s work was streamed across live screens at the event as well as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, and they were the ones controlling it all,’ says Kaylene Tyler, Production Coordinator, Screen and Media at Swinburne - PAVE.

‘The team operated on industry standard Blackmagic hardware and software, and worked alongside industry professionals. It was a fantastic opportunity for the graduates to apply their recently learnt skills to a big scale, live event and make industry connections’ says Kaylene. 

Graduates turned industry mentors

The 2020 event saw alumi returning to the production team, this time as mentors, including Advanced Diploma of Screen and Media – Film and Television graduate Nathan Klooger. He said: ‘the experience was like no other’ and really helped put into perspective the range of skills learnt while studying’.

‘Working on Pause Fest really helped me hone my communications and practical skills, and gave me momentum to push myself. I think the experience has really helped my freelance career. I’m now working on advertisements, music videos, and short films’ says Nathan.

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