Full Sail
Facility Spotlight: Show Production Spaces on Campus
Students studying show production at Full Sail get hands-on experience working in a variety of industry-standard venues.
When students complete Full Sail’s show production coursework, they will have been taught how to handle most aspects of any live event. That’s because they get a wealth of hands-on experience across a wide range of industry-standard environments around the Full Sail campus.
The hands-on work starts in the Treehouse, a student-run live performance venue. It hosts open mic nights, talent shows, and other events.
“It has kind of a small club vibe and corporate AV production environment,” says David Dean, Program Director for show production. “It has a front-of-house area for lighting and sound control as well as a small room for a video flypack.”
Students in Project and Portfolio III: Show Production work with faculty to help coordinate events in the space.
“Our students get to experience a production from booking to execution,” David explains. “[They] get to experience the production management aspect as well as learning to operate gear and interact with clients.”
They then move on to Full Sail Live 1. Facilities in this lab space include a video control room, where the director, technical director, and other technicians create the video content. On the other side, a broadcast audio room serves as a hub to collect the inputs and signals from the main stage area for streaming or recording.
Full Sail Live 2 is another space they explore in Audio and Visual Technologies. It’s set up similar to a podcast recording studio, and students learn audio, video, and lighting equipment. They also get experience using a flypack, a portable video system. The flypack is used at events around campus and in the community.
Another classroom, Full Sail Live 3, is a hybrid space.
“I do my lectures in there,” says Corbett Compel, Department Chair for show production. “It's a unique space because it's half lecture, half lab, so a very versatile room and one of the spaces where our students start early on hooking up equipment, following signal flow, making systems work together.”
Students also learn signal flow and other similar concepts in the Introduction to Show Production Systems lab room.
“They set up a lighting rig and they learn how to set up cameras for the first time as well,” David says.
In addition, the Project and Portfolio VI: Audio Arts class does a walkthrough of Studio V1, a virtual production studio.
The Backlot is an expansive outdoor area on campus mainly for film productions. This professional, Hollywood-style space features scenery built from several popular locations, including the Seattle Fish Market, New Orleans’ French Quarter, and New York City’s brownstones, along with more generic locations. During Hall of Fame Week, however, the area plays host to some exciting live events.
“It really is kind of like Full Sail's version of a pep rally [area],” David says. “Over the years, we've done quite a few portable stages [there]. Show production students do the mixing and the lighting and all the production aspects.”
Students also attend a four-hour lab in the Dan Patrick School of Sportscasting production lab put on by sportscasting students.
“Sportscasting students write, produce, and edit videos, and then they're the on-air talent for a three to five-minute segment,” Corbett explains. “Then show production students serve as crew for that, whether it be audio, video, lighting, teleprompter, or stage management. It gives them exposure to something… that's kind of a different experience than most of what they've done.”
The Full Sail University Orlando Health Fortress is an 11,200-square-foot space used for various events, particularly esports tournaments. In the Sports Broadcast Production course, show production students collaborate with Game Business and Esports students to develop an esports production. The two-day experience involves setting up cameras, lights, microphones, and gaming consoles. It’s then on to the rehearsal, followed by the final production.
The largest production area on campus is the Full Sail Live Venue, boasting 22,000 square feet of space. The facility hosts graduations and other large events.
“Our show production students fill out that crew call and treat it just like another production, so [they work with] all that state-of-the-art gear,” David says.
They partner with the school's in-house Events department on live productions, such as a recent fundraiser concert event for the Metal and Honey Foundation, featuring Trivium guitarist Matt Heafy. Plus, they work with high school bands in this location as part of the Production Pathways program.
“They do a final show… from pre-production to final asset editing,” David explains. “They have a few days before their main production to kind of practice setup and to get an overview of the space. [Then] they bring a band in and do the graphics, the video for the video wall, and the IMAG. They do the camera operation shading and switching, and there's a director. You have a Front-of-House Audio [Engineer]. You also have a Simulcast Engineer upstairs in the back room recording. It's kind of like their last hurrah before graduation.”
And what are the biggest takeaways for students upon immersing themselves in these spaces?
“The productions are the curriculum,” David says. “You got the space, the gear, but more importantly you have the crew dynamic, the students working together with an artist to do the production. In the heat of doing that, unforeseen things happen, real-world quirks that students have to adapt to, and that's the importance of hands-on [opportunities].”
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