Today was our first guest speaker and business visit in Spain. Our guest speaker was Benjamin Cunningham who worked as an international journalist, but now is an author.
He was born in Michigan, bored, and wanted to go for his master’s in international journalism. Ben decided to study in Amsterdam to better learn how to work and live internationally.
After graduating, he worked in Amsterdam, bounced around through Europe, and finally settled in Spain.
Ben also talked about Reporters without Borders which is an organization that promotes press freedom no matter where they are in the world. I thought it was interesting to see the site’s map ranking each country in press freedom and learn that the United States is in 45th place while other comparable places like Canada or the United Kingdom are significantly placed higher.
I thought his lecture was very insightful on being an integrational journalist and provided some good context on the different types of press ownership and control.
Next, we went over and took a business visit with Mediapro. We toured their facilities seeing their filming stages, audio rooms, and broadcasting rooms.
The most interesting thing was seeing the technology they had. On the filming stage, they had a big green screen.
They were using 3D environments to place actors into more lively environments. Using Unreal Engine, they are able to create any 3D environment they want.
Then, as the camera moves, it tracks and will change depending on its location. Another really interesting feature they showed was virtually broadcasting sports players into the studio to create what looks like an in person interview with the host. And that’s about it.
