Accomplishments

Journalism student claims Commendation Award at inter-collegiate documentary competition

Angel Chan (Broadcast Journalism, Year 4) won the Commendation Award for her work entitled Angels in the Dark at the 2016 TVB Inter-Collegiate Documentary Competition. An award from this annual competition has gone to students of HKBU every single year since it began in 2014.

Angel said that Hong Kong society pays a lot of attention to issues of patients suffering from mental illnesses but the difficulties and pressure facing family members who have to take care of them are not discussed much, therefore she chose this topic for her in-depth report. She took five months to complete the documentary, from writing the story line and researching information to arranging interviews and post production work. For her, getting consent from potential interviewees was the most difficult task: “Family members often worry about how the patient would react and feel when the documentary is on air, so they reject the interview outright.”

She applied a lot of techniques learnt from documentaries on cases of family violence and sexual abuse which protect the identities of the interviewees, such as voice alteration, pixelisation, and so forth.

Angel is very grateful to Mr Fung Tak-hung and Mr Sum Wan-wah, part-time Lecturers of the Department of Journalism, for their guidance throughout the production. She also thanked Ms Bonnie Chiu, Associate Head and Mr Bruce Lui, Senior Lecturer of the Department for their help in the past few years. “They helped me a lot to improve my relaxed pronunciation. If not for them, I could not have been able to do the voice over, complete the documentary, not to mention win the award,” she said.

Now in its third year, the competition presents three awards – a Grand Jury Prize and two Commendation Awards. Participants from local tertiary institutions are required to produce a documentary of around nine minutes on social issues in Hong Kong, which comply with the Generic Code of Practice on Television Advertising Standards. The winning work will be aired on 3 September on TVB Jade.

 

	Angel Chan (right) wins the Commendation Award at the 2016 TVB Inter-Collegiate Documentary Competition