We offer each of our trainees a summer bursary of up to £1,000 every summer of their degree to spend on journalism work experience or a journalism project, giving them the unique opportunity to travel and explore the areas of journalism they are passionate about.
School of Journalism trainee Jacob Antigha shared how he used his bursary to travel to New York to create a documentary about attitudes towards free transport.
This summer I decided to use my £1,000 summer bursary to write, shoot and edit my own short documentary that put everything I learnt during my time at The School of Journalism to the test.
After having made long-form documentaries for the past three years, I found it became easier to talk about anything for nearly an hour, but with major news outlets pivoting towards social video, condensing a complicated topics topic into shroter videos would be a desirable skill when looking for jobs after graduating.
I aspire to cover American politics in New York but I didn’t really know where to begin so I decided creating a short documentary about Zohran Mamdani’s plans to make transport free in the Big Apple was a great way to begin to pave my way into it.
I’ve always been a big nerd for public transport; I regularly visit the TfL Museum and even made a short film about my local model train club for a course module last year so when Zohran Mamdani was elected as Mayor of New York with a headline promise to make New York City buses free, I felt like I had found the perfect entry point.
My usual approach to documentary filmmaking relies on choosing topics with broad appeal and sharpening the scope by zeroing in on a hyper-specific subculture or local angle.
I started work on this film by mapping out rough bullet points across four acts, weighing up the dream of free bus travel against the reality of who actually picks up the multi-billion-dollar bill.
The biggest hurdle came when trying to secure interviews.
Unfortunately my interviewees pulled out at the last minute and I had to rethink the direction of my documentary.
Being flexible after planning around my interviews was the best thing I could have done.
Instead of panicking, I used the quick-thinking skills I learnt in my immersive reporting module and thought of a different approach – an explainer-style, data-led documentary.
I focused on making my narration far more engaging with my intonation, overshooting my B-roll for flexibility in the edit, and stepping up my technical production quality.
I bought a much better tripod and started using a wireless lavalier mic for the first time on any of my documentaries.
While writing the script, I shot B-roll around London at Westminster Bridge, Marylebone Road, and City Hall.
I also got to go abroad as a journalist for work for the very first time, capturing NYC transit footage while getting to see some amazing lifelong dream sights like going to the very top of the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the 9/11 Memorial, and even the original Declaration of Independence signed by U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
Diving into the research brought up some surprising nuances, like how NYC’s initial free-bus trial wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
The data showed it actually siphoned revenue away from the MTA Subway and mostly shifted people who were already walking or taking transit, rather than getting drivers out of cars. I think this documentary is definitely the one that sticks out the most for a variety of reasons.
It is my shortest film yet, but it allowed me to take all the skills I gained from long-form filmmaking and adapt them to a modern, punchy video journalism format. None of it would have been possible without the bursary from the School of Journalism, which allowed me to make a film that I hope shows how important transport is politically, even if it isn’t as long as my other works.
If you would like to see more of my work, here is my LinkedIn, portfolio and Instagram page.
Last year, Jacob used his bursary to create a documentary about the modelling instry, find out more here.
You can read more of our summer bursary blogs here.
Sign up to our free The School of Journalism taster sessions here.