Celuloid secrets by Kit

Calling film and media students, and teaching staff!  Copyright issues around re-using audiovisual material are complex, particularly in student assessment such as film essays: this free, October workshop could help you in your studies or teaching.

Run by the BFI, Learning on Screen and Kingston School of Art, this half-day workshop will explore the creative use of archive material, for Higher Education studies.

Participants will raise their awareness of copyright considerations in re-using archival moving-image works, and consider creative and pedagogic approaches to using this kind of material.

The workshop also marks the launch of an initiative to open up the BFI archive to student film makers, and a recent pilot scheme using BFI archive material will be presented.

Attendance is free but registration required. 18 October 2017, 11.00 – 14.00 at the BFI Southbank. Full details  are on the Learning on Screen website.

In a previous post I mentioned UCL’s CLA licence for digitising course readings. UCL holds several other licences useful for teaching: take advantage of them to deliver imaginative teaching to your students. They can also simplify complex copyright issues.

The ERA (Educational Recording Agency) licence is for recording broadcast TV and radio for educational purposes. There is a helpful ERA licence booklet; however it is even easier to avoid the paperwork and head straight to Box of Broadcasts (BoB).

BoB makes the best use of our ERA licence, with no administrative fuss: no record-keeping, recording from the TV or labelling of DVDs. It is similar to on-demand streaming services like the BBC iPlayer or 4oD, but across 65 channels, you can request programmes, and it is for educational purposes only.  You can provide students with a link to a full programme, a clip you can create yourself, or to whole playlists you have created. We encourage adding the links into your online reading list for the best experience for students.

If you already use BoB in your teaching you will have had an email notifying you of the summer upgrade, which will be complete by September. Watch a short promotional video to see the improvements outlined in 60 seconds. These include:

• Improved video quality
• A platform which works across all devices
• Better searching capabilities
• Better programme coverage and automatic requesting with a permanent archive of all programme content from 9 channels (BBC1 London/BBC2 London/BBC4/ITV London/Channel 4/More 4/ Channel 5/BBC Radio 4/BBC Radio 4 Extra)
• Better thumbnail previews on search results
• Email alerts when a requested programme is ready to view
• More detailed citation data

Please note that during the upgrade the full archive may not be available, however everything will back as usual by September.

BoB is powered by Learning on Screen, the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council (formerly BUFVC) which has interesting resources relating to teaching with moving image. UCL also holds a membership to this body.

Follow BoB on Twitter: @OnDemandBoB

Teaching & Learning Services: for ReadingLists@UCL, digitised course readings and copyright support.

Whilst Chris is unpacking the new amendments to the CDPA to explain how it will affect UCL teaching and learning, we have also been looking at the other side of the coin: resources which can be used in teaching.  Below are two resources that can be linked to for educational purposes, without infringing copyright. Neither are copyright-free or in the public domain, however they allow specific usage that can be fantastically useful in teaching.

BoB National: Box of Broadcasts

Teaching staff were very enthusiastic about this during a successful trial, and UCL has now taken a subscription.  BoB gives access to 60+ TV and radio channels.  You can request programmes you have missed, ‘record’ upcoming programmes and create clips.  These are saved to BoB indefinitely, for all BoB users to view.

To log in select ‘UCL’ from the institutions list, and use your usual UCL ID and password.  There are video tutorials or you can just start browsing.

• You can: view, share, and create clips.
• You cannot: view from outside the UK. Download or store on your computer.

British Pathe Archive

This newly available resource is open access; that is, it is available online to view for free.  British Pathe has had its entire collection digitised under a National Lottery grant and this is now available via their YouTube channel.

This archive makes available film clips from significant global historical events, including first and second World Wars, the Hiroshima bombing, Suffragette action and footage of the Titanic.  There is footage of the first mobile phone (1922) and features on travel, fashion and celebrities.

• You can: view and share the film clips (e.g. using the Twitter / Facebook etc. ‘share’ buttons).
• You cannot: play in the classroom, or download and store.  Pathe advertisements are included.

Open access resources are especially useful for teaching on open online courses (such as UCL eXtend, or CPD courses), where students are not registered at UCL and therefore unable to access UCL-subscribed resources.  Do make sure the links are stable for your students, and perhaps consider using ReadingLists@UCL to keep links to your teaching resources in one place.