UCLan shares student journey through ‘mannequin challenge’

8 February 2017

Students and staff produce final version of video that went viral

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has captured the many stages of student life through a ‘mannequin challenge’ video that has already attracted a lot of attention on social media.

The video, which was made to encourage students to feedback their University experiences by completing the annual National Student Survey (NSS), follows a typical student’s journey from arriving on campus for the first time, to lectures, socialising and finally graduation.

The whole project was created by and featured current UCLan students and staff from the School of Journalism, Media and Performance who filmed, acted, directed and produced the video right down to the accompanying soundtrack composed by music production students.

"This is a great way for students to understand what the NSS is and see how they can provide useful feedback on their course and the University more widely."

The graduation ceremony clip, which starred more than 1,000 from a December ceremony, has already proved to be a hit after it attracted almost 80,000 views in less than 24 hours on the University’s Facebook page at the end of last year.

Final year television production student Sam Green was one of the students involved in making the film.  He said: “This is a great way for students to understand what the NSS is and see how they can provide useful feedback on their course and the University more widely.  Everyone involved in the project was really up for helping and wanted to be part of this viral craze.  It meant we came out with an interesting and different style of video.”

Executive Dean of the College of Culture and the Creative Industries Dr Andrew Ireland said: “We were really pleased when the graduation clip went viral on social media and people really bought into what we were trying to do. Filming that sequence with such a large public crowd was a real ‘fingers crossed’ moment hoping everyone would stay still for so long.  Now the whole film is complete, we’re hoping it will capture people’s imagination and inspire all our students to get involved with the NSS and make their voices heard.”

Watch the video on Youtube - https://youtu.be/zgTddGgzI60