Students win Royal Television Society award for Exceptional Technical Achievement

This award recognises the outstanding technical and creative work of five talented students behind university Final Major Project (FMP), Nothing But Net - an ambitious live outside broadcast showcasing the National Basketball League (NBL).

Stuart Ray, Chair of RTS Southern says "RTS judges were incredibly impressed with the work which went into 'Nothing but Net'. A project of this scale and complexity is a complicated and stressful task even for a major broadcaster, but to deliver something so accomplished as a student team was worthy of recognition. The student team produced a live, five-hour broadcast complete with content absolutely equivalent to any major broadcaster and the judges felt this was extremely worthy of a Special Award."

The inspiration for the project came from the work the students were doing through Sonar Events, the University’s student-led TV and live events society. The award-winning team – Ben Dewey, Ben Killackey. Sophie Humphrey, Fergus Daly and Will Statham - regularly covered NBL and WNBL Basketball for Team Solent Kestrels Basketball Club. “We wanted to take that coverage and squeeze everything we could out of it for our FMP,” says recent graduate Ben Killackey, who now works at Sky Sports as a Technical Supervisor.

Challenging themselves to replicate coverage being produced by big broadcasters and the British Basketball League, the student team introduced fully featured presentation and analysis, commentary from Basketball England (the national governing body), and produced four feature VTs.

The talented team overcame the technical challenge of linking two production galleries, situated in separate buildings, through the use of fibre cables and extensive rehearsals. They further elevated the footage by using the University’s new state-of-the-art Virtual Production Stage, and cutting-edge analysis software enabled pundits to provide in-depth analysis directly on the game footage.

Senior Lecturer Kate O’Driscoll says, "This was a Final Major Project of exceptional technical accomplishment and reflects the hard work and the passion of all those involved. BA (Hons) TV Production and BA (Hons) Post Production for Film and TV have a long history of award winners at the RTS, both regionally and nationally. This is a reflection of the standard of work the students are producing that time and again are being recognised by industry bodies like the RTS."

Ben credits the success of the project to the collaborative spirit and dedication of the students who worked tirelessly through the ‘many’ rehearsals and live broadcast days, commentary from Basketball England, pundits from Team Solent Kestrels, and presenters Reece Barrett and Josh Stuart, both BA (Hons) Sports Journalism graduates from Solent.

Speaking after the awards Ben Killackey said, “We're incredibly proud that the whole Nothing But Net team has been recognised by such a historic organisation as the RTS. Over 50 students across 10 different courses, 15 cameras and two separate galleries came together to produce the live broadcast. We're so grateful to everyone who gave up so much of their time to be a part of the crew, as well as all those in the industry who did so much to help support us - this award really is for everyone involved! I hope our project can help inspire others to be ambitious, try to push the boundaries and to embrace collaboration!”

The award-winning team are already making their mark in the television industry since graduating last summer. Both Sophie and Ben are working at Sky Sports, Ben Dewey is an assistant editor at Woodcut Media, while Fergus and Will are freelancing.

Take a look behind the scenes here.