January 2022 has been a bumper month for UK esports, with our campus playing host to two incredible esports tournaments, including the first in-studio Halo Infinite esports broadcast, and the second annual Rainbow Six Siege “Memevitational”. Both of these tournaments were supported by fantastic Confetti Esports Production students on Do It For Real opportunities. Thanks to the efforts of our Confetti Tech Team, esports tutors and the amazing contributions from our students, the activities have raised over £5,000 for Maggie’s cancer care charity.
Halo Infinite Clash Series
‘Halo Clash Series’ was the world’s first live studio broadcast in 2022 for the newly released Halo Infinite game. The event took place across two days and two continents. The European tournament was held on 8 January while the North American event took place on 9 January, with all competing teams playing for a charity of their choice.
The event was supported by multiple UK esports personalities including host, Iain Chambers, analysts, Blank and Leon Gids, and casters, Jacky and Lethal_HT. Our very own HE Esports Production tutor, Jakub Szmyt, helped to organise and pull-off the events with the support of our students. In addition to supporting with the live broadcast, Confetti students and our Tech Team supported Jakub to transform a desk he’d crafted himself into a slick esports shoutcaster station. Take a look at some before and after pics and photos of the cast and crew on-set!
The Halo Clash Series tournament was held at our live music and cross media venue, Metronome Nottingham, located close-by to Confetti HQ. Whilst the studios inside Metronome are often used by our students as part of their studies, Metronome is also used for commercial hire with live music, comedy, and spoken word events taking place every day of the week. The host of Halo Clash Series, Iain Chambers, had some fantastic words to say about the brilliant team of supporting players and world-class facilities at Metronome:
“The Metronome building is mesmerising, there’s all sorts of events going on here and there’s state of the art stuff that’s pretty much never been seen before in student esports development. The Halo Clash Series set was built in just two days, setting a precedent here in Nottingham, it’s pretty amazing!”
Check out this behind the scenes video, introducing the cast and crew and back stage antics at the Halo Clash Series event:
Join @iainchambers @BlankCasts and @LeonGids of a small tour of the @Confetti_ICT Metronome venue which will slowly turn into a hub of Student Esports Production in the UK!
What more do you need? pic.twitter.com/95yXgiADyG
— Jakub (@atroooix) January 10, 2022
1st Year BSc Esports Production student, Rebecca Green, was one of the crew involved supporting the Halo Clash Series production. Rebecca recently wrote a guest blog for our site where she discussed her experiences studying Level 3 Games Technology and now esports at Confetti. We caught up with Rebecca after the Halo event to find out why she wanted to get involved, and what her key takeaways were from the experience:
“It was an excellent chance to develop my photography and marketing skills through supporting with social media promotion.
“I used my photography and lighting skills to take the pictures, then used Photoshop and Lightroom to edit them and create original assets to be posted, as well as using basic video editing skills to clip videos from Twitch.
“The most important skill I used however was time management, having to plan out all my important posts beforehand for the Halo event and just generally being quick and responsive with my photography for both.
“At the Halo event, I watched all the games with the host and analysts and they helped me figure out what kind of clips the audience will be interested in. I also learnt from Jakub new photo editing skills and how to protect and promote my images on social media, as well as the importance of working quickly and efficiently.
“Having had a taste of the creative freedom photography and social media management can give me, and having demonstrated that I can succeed in a fast paced environment, I now feel more confident about what I want to do in the future.”
If you missed the Halo Clash Series stream on Twitch, or simply want to catch-up on the action, check out this cinematic highlights reel produced by 1st Year BSc Esports Production student, Rory Singer:
Rainbow Six Siege “Memevitational”
The tongue in cheek titled ‘Six Memevitational’ tournament, offered a more light-hearted approach to Rainbow Six Siege esports. The two day event held on 15 and 16 January demonstrated how esports is so much more than just competitive gaming. The hosting team had lots of in-studio hijinks going on in-between games, full of practical jokes, dares for charity and even some sing songs, oh and don’t forget the memes!
If this is not a great reason to support @MaggiesCentres, then what is?! #SixMemevitational pic.twitter.com/6Z7gzgh3Ps
— R6 Memesports (@r6memesports) January 15, 2022
The first Six Memevitation tournament took place last year in response to the delay of the 2021 Six Invitational. Our very own HE Esports Production tutor, Jakub ‘Atroix’ Szmyt, was one of those responsible for setting up this new fan favourite and he was instrumental in bringing this year’s live in-studio broadcast to our campus. The Memevitational cast included UK host/caster, Derry ‘Dezachu’ Holt, and UK coach/analyst, Jack ‘Fresh’ Thomas Allen, alongside other prominent esports personalities:
#SixMemevitational "talent" in-between games: pic.twitter.com/XSvhrnAR55
— R6 Memesports (@r6memesports) January 16, 2022
The event aimed to raise lots of money for Maggie’s Centres, a UK-based charity that provides free practical and emotional support for people living with cancer. Thanks to the generous contributions of streamers and supporters following on social, the 2022 Six Memevitational managed to raise over £5,000 for charity!
2nd Year BSc Esports Production student, Alex Calladine, was graphics operator for both Halo Clash Series and the Six Memevitational. When we caught up with Alex he went into detail on the degree of preparation and skill it took to get these events off the ground:
“I helped set up the production space for both events, this meant rigging the large LED wall backings, rigging lighting and cameras for the main stage, setting up microphones and configuring workstation PCs for the production crew.
“Graphics operation is all about preparation. Using my knowledge of vMix, GT Title Designer, vMix Social, Photoshop, Bitfocus Companion, and data linking to graphics spreadsheets with application programming interfaces, I was able to execute graphics implementation to a professional industry standard”.
We asked Alex about his thoughts on the BSc Esports Production course, why he wanted to be involved in the esports events, and what he learnt, he said:
“This year the course has really stepped up. Jakub Szmyt joined the teaching team this year, and has brought with him a large number of opportunities to work on professional esports productions.
“I wanted to be involved in these events because ‘learning on the job’ is by far the most efficient and certain way to consolidate the learning of skills and theory on the course.
“Our new esports tutor, Jakub Szmyt, has brought with him a lot of real-world industry connections, it’s amazing to get the opportunity to work on professional productions while still studying.
“The events were an eye-opening experience, as they’re the first experience I’ve had working professional esports productions in a studio setting.”
We have more exciting esports events coming up in 2022, including welcoming back the British Esports Association to campus in June 2022 to host the 2021-22 British Esports Championships!
