HSE Students in International Student Talk Show on US Elections

On November 4^th, 2016, students from many countries took part in an online broadcast to discuss the final stage of the US presidential campaign 2016. The event was organized by the Global Campus Network at Ryerson University, Toronto.

3^rd-year students in Journalism Oksana Gandziuk and Daria Kasiyanenko also joined the talk and delivered a report from the HSE Media Centre.

Oksana Gandziuk

'We learned about this student talkshow during our lectures by Oleg Dmitriev. He said that our colleagues from the University of Toronto were preparing an online broadcast on the US presidential elections, and asking other universities from around the world to participate in their project – to make a short video featuring reactions to the elections in their own countries. We thought it was a great opportunity for us to test ourselves as international reporters.

The next day we prepared the script of our video: we decided to be the hosts, and to present the topic, express our point of view and analyze vox populi of HSE students. We prepared a presentation, the lecturer proofread the text, approved it and allowed us to proceed with the filming. Since there were only two of us, we decided that we would need to be presenters, camera operators and editors at the same time.

First we filmed vox populi: we took our cameras, microphones and camera holders from the media centre and went to Dubki dormitory, where we filmed members of the English club, and the next day we went to the university. After vox populi we proceeded with the studio footage. At first we felt a little nervous – it was difficult for us to present the news in a foreign language in front of multiple cameras and without a prompter. But it was definitely worth it – after the filming you feel a lot of energy and a desire to keep on working. Then we moved to the editing, a process that took us a couple of days.'

Daria Kasiyanenko

'About thirty students from different courses helped us to present the HSE view on American elections. We prepared 5 questions and interviewed each student. Many of them felt nervous in front of the camera and constantly worried about using English correctly, but in the end we collected a lot of interesting opinions, in which serious discourse on foreign policy was mixed with funny answers about Trump's orange hue. As students we can allow ourselves to be a little less serious than adult reporters.

After all the interviews we sat in the editing studio and started to determine the logic of the narrative. We came across a lot of recurring thoughts and ideas, for example, fifteen people said that Hillary Clinton reminds them of a cunning fox, and absolutely every student mentioned that only Donald Trump would be able to improve relations with Russia.

While we edited the studio footage and interviews into one file, Andrei Afanasov, filmmaker of the Media Centre, started working on a green screen behind the presenters. Actually, we didn't expect to see such a great studio with the HSE logo on the background just three days later.

Our report was broadcast 40 minutes after the beginning of the show, and presentations of students from other countries - England, Australia, America, Hong Kong, India – were also transmitted. It was interesting to see not only the difference in our mentality, but also their technical performance and idea implementation. I really liked the report by Indian students, their modern studio is awesome!

We would like to thank Oleg Dmitriev who helped and supported us at every stage of production. We look forward to joining new international projects.'

Oleg Dmitriev, Professor at the School of Media

'I am glad that the Global Campus Network at Ryerson University organized this talk at the right time in the right place - it's time for both students and lecturers to know more about what we can do at the faculty. For the students it’s a great opportunity to work with their colleagues from other countries. The Canadian project came in handy, I learned about it in the beginning of September from Sergey Korzun and Iliya Kiriya, just when we started the course Overview of modern international multimedia outlets.

And I’m very glad that Oksana Gandziuk and Dasha Kasiyanenko enthusiastically undertook the project. It's nice that the video features many opinions and brilliant and sometimes witty responses, which enlivened the show of our Canadian colleagues. I wish there were more projects like this in the faculty. Learning and working at the same time - that’s exactly what our students need.'

November 07, 2016