Media is one of our biggest pathways – home to some serious talent across animation and VFX, graphic design, videography, photography, content creation and more.
As you may have seen, we’ve recently launched our ‘Media Spotlight’ series to highlight media students and alumni who have contributed to an incredible zine from ACC Birmingham.
In Part 1, we spoke to Sam, a recent Graphic and Digital Design graduate to find out more about how it was created and what it’s like to build a career in graphic design.
In Part 2, we meet Kat, a Film, Videography and Photography graduate. Read on to find out more.
Hi Kat, tell us about yourself.
I studied Level 3 Film, Video and Photography at ACC Birmingham before going on to study Media Production at university. I am primarily a photographer, which I picked up at the start of college, but recently I have been branching out more into video. I’m very passionate about my projects and mainly enjoy doing music related projects and fictional videos. You can find all of my work on my instagram page – @katjpeg_
Your work recently appeared in Access Birmingham’s media zine. Tell us about how that came together?
I was contacted by the college after leaving, asking if I would like to be a part of their zine and I really appreciated the offer because it just shows that all the work I did in college paid off. I decided to compile some of the work I am most proud of which consisted of a mixture of personal and college projects. I included both photography and some stills from music videos I have made to really showcase the range of things you can actually learn on the courses at Access. You can see a variety of styles I have worked in as one of the music videos is more vibrant than the gothic/grunge style I have started to specialise in more.
Your main focus in your work is gig photography, delving a little into music videos. What made you want to focus on music photography and videography?
When starting at Access the music course was constantly offering gigs for media students to go and photograph so I decided to just give it a shot and see how it went and I just absolutely loved it. I love live music in general so then being able to capture it whilst still enjoying the music was so much fun – plus you can get some really cool shots that you just can’t really recreate in a studio. With the musicians just focusing on their music and the crowd you catch such awesome candid shots, plus the instruments just make everything look 10x cooler. I also have my own background in music as I’ve played guitar for 7 years and just love music in general so I think that makes it easier for me to have a passion for capturing it.
As for the music videos, I was contacted by Sophie Grace from the music course to film a video for her song ‘Fall (For Once)’ and I found that I just really enjoyed creating that narrative with her and experimenting with different shots that would achieve the vision she wanted. From this I decided to make my own music video for my final major project and I went for a vampire theme as I love the gothic style and have always loved vampire media. That ended up being so fun to film, I loved planning all the costuming and just using a ton of fake blood to make everything look cool. I also find the post production of music videos really interesting as I find it really enjoyable to watch the project come together from the first cut, to adjusting the flow of the narrative, to adding cool effects like cinematic bars and colour grading.
How do you approach a shoot? What’s your go-to equipment?
I do not go anywhere without my kaleidoscope filter or my star filters. Especially with gig photography they can just make a photo so much more interesting and I find that they always end up being the subjects’ favourite photos as well.
Other than that I just have a basic Nikon camera with a kit lens and a 35mm lens. It’s not the best set up in the world but if you have a passion for what you’re capturing it doesn’t matter in the end. Plus with things like college and university it’s usually possible to borrow better equipment rather than emptying your bank account on it!
When editing your shots and footage, what are you using and what are you looking for in the end result?
I use the Adobe Suite to edit all of my projects. For photography, I mainly use Lightroom Classic as this just makes it so much easier to filter through and categorise my photos. Then it has everything you need to adjust aspects of the photos. Personally, I’m a big fan of higher contrast images so you’ll find a lot of deep darks in my photos as for me a flatter look just isn’t really what I’m after. I then sometimes use Photoshop on some of the images to add some cooler effects like a gradient map (basically shades the colours of the original image into something more interesting).
For my videos, I tend to just use Premiere Pro and my first step is always to just try and create a flow with the narrative that mirrors what I planned out in my pre-production and keeps the audience’s attention. My favourite part of video editing is more towards the end where you can add things like grain, text effects and a colour grade. These are the aspects that, for me, just make a project feel so much more professional. I love doing a dramatic colour grade, in my vampire music video I just really desaturated everything but the reds so it had a way more gothic look to it.
How was your time at ACC Birmingham? How do you feel it contributed to your career?
I was able to make a lot of connections with other creatives through college which allowed me to gain so much experience working with different types of people in different environments. It can be very daunting to work with people you don’t know but through various studio shoots, gigs and music videos I started learning how to comfortably and professionally interact with clients.
I learnt a lot through my tutor as well, he really helped everyone grasp how the studio worked and the most effective way to utilise a camera to yield the best results for what you want. Having someone who worked in the industry as a teacher is so incredibly helpful because they know how to give you really constructive feedback and advice to improve your work as well as being able to give you advice on things like networking.
Tell us about shooting the (ACC Award winning) video for ‘Perhaps Vampire Is A Bit Strong But..’. How did that opportunity come about, and how did it feel to win your ACC Award?
That music video is what I decided to do for my final major project to emphasise all the skills I had learnt in my 2 years at college. The idea was built on work from previous projects, mainly my dissertation, where I talked about how vampire media has developed since Nosferatu up to the present day.
Winning an award for this music video was honestly such a nice sign that the work I put in paid off. I really cared about this music video and had such a fun time making it, so having it highlighted as the best video was just incredibly rewarding.
You’ve recently gone on to university. How’s that going?
University is going amazing – it was definitely the right choice for me. I chose a media production course so it’s a bit more broad. I’ll be covering things like graphic design and radio, as well as film and photography. For me this just fits what I want better as I didn’t want to specialise in a particular area yet and just wanted to experiment with a broader set of skills.
I’ve already been able to connect with several other creatives, and have been discussing working on several peoples films – some of them not even doing a film course. I’ve also been looking into societies that will allow me to work on various things, including gig photography so I’m really looking forward to that!
What’s next for you in your career? What are you working towards, and what are your hopes for the future?
Currently I just want to experiment with as much media as possible. I really want to work on a short film and do some more physical media like collaging with my photographs. I’m hoping to pick up some more work experience in the industry, as I think that will be really beneficial for my career.
As for the future, I am currently using university to figure out where I want to go with my work. I want to work on a range of things throughout my career as I’d just find that more interesting!
If you’ve got a passion for media that you want to build into a career, consider one of our Media courses. Applications are open now.
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