ABSTRACT Virtual Reality (VR) is a rapidly evolving medium within the film industry with the ability to engage viewers in an immersive storytelling experience that transcends traditional 2D film techniques. This research is developed from a student internship program to explore the transformative potential of VR180 and the use of 3D imaging in the realm of cinematic storytelling, focusing on the reimagining of traditional 2D cinema conventions for immersive films. The project experiments with innovative ways of conveying narrative elements, such as framing, pacing, and visual composition. This paper details techniques filmmakers can use to adapt traditional cinema language for immersive VR works. The short VR180 documentary film, A Love Letter to Skating, allows viewers to view a story in the VR environment. Utilising recent technology that combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a mobile application that captures a 3D render, a static immersive VR scene was created for viewers to step inside the film for a multisensory experience. The project contributes to the evolving discourse on the intersection of traditional filmmaking and VR, paving the way for a new era in immersive storytelling where the boundaries between audience and narrative are blurred, and the cinematic experience is redefined for the VR generation.

ABSTRACT Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have long played a central role in educating Black journalists, yet little research has examined the health and function of student media at these institutions. Building on prior research documenting the decline of student news outlets at HBCUs, this qualitative study explores the shared values and indicators of health among student-run news organizations through the lens of institutional theory. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 student journalists and editors representing eight HBCUs during the 2024–2025 academic year. Using an inductive thematic analysis, this study identifies five core themes shaping student newsroom culture: pride in the HBCU, value of legacy, role in the greater community, intrinsic reward, and varying perceptions of institutional health. Findings indicate that student journalists balance both ambassadorship and watchdog roles, and they grapple with tensions between institutional loyalty and journalistic independence. Participants demonstrated strong commitment to journalistic ethics, community service, and dedication to sustaining their publications for future generations. While various factors threaten sustainability, deeply rooted journalistic values and strong sense of legacy among student journalists contribute to the continued value and vitality of these institutions and their instrumental role in shaping future Black media professionals.

ABSTRACT Researcher-filmmakers Catherine Gough-Brady, Kim Munro, Christine Rogers and Cassandra Tytler explore the embodied spaces and connections between the creator and the audience. Using their own practice in installation, theatre and filmmaking, they interrogate who these spectators might be. They use three ‘provocations’ as a way of discussing the audience: How do we engage the audience in the work? What methods do we use to engage the audience before and after the work? And, what is the place of critical filmmaking both in academia and in wider society? There is a plurality of voices in the responses, in the experiences, and the works shared. Yet, a central theme emerges in these diverse voices of a screen-based creative practitioner’s desire for the audience to be an active community rather than a passive spectator.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan – an American newspaper strip which became the first to win a UK-award for literary novels – to conceptualize what constitutes patient-oriented media practice. Methodologically, the semi-autobiographical nature of the graphic novel allows it to be viewed as simultaneously patient lived-experience and patient-created art. Ware first mobilizes visual media to reject toxic masculinity as excuse for fatherless sons, instead diving into parental abandonment and its profound ties with immigration, colonialism, slavery, militarism, and parent–child relations as neoliberal exchange. His visual media presents two rejected white heterosexual males, who consistently seek to empathize with and reclaim value of what society has deemed to be low-value: playful innocence; patients; unwanted children; and, artistic media practice itself. Through dedicating nearly four-hundred pages of visuals on patients who experience few successes in life – even failing at being a mental-health patient – Ware communicates the level of dignity and inner-strength needed to resist a self-centered approach of mental health self-care. The word patient is thus no longer subordinate to a medical system nor health professionals, but paradoxically emerges as superheroic through Ware’s unique media practice on what on surface appears to be the daily mundane.

ABSTRACT This article presents a case study of the feature length documentary ‘Left Write Hook’ and the trauma-informed production methodology developed across the project. Analysed through a phenomenological lens, this in-depth study unfolds as a dialogue between the film's creators (as researchers, makers and authors of the article), shedding light on the complexities of creating a documentary about adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Anchored in the ethos of social impact filmmaking, the project navigates the delicate balance of sensitive storytelling while striving to avoid re-traumatisation of participants and viewers. Through foregrounding relational ethics, the making of ‘Left Write Hook’ challenges mainstream industry measures of access and commercial viability to illustrate a co-creative process underscored by survivor empowerment and narrative re-storying. The article advocates for trauma-informed, socially responsible filmmaking and offers insights into how such an approach can reshape documentary narratives. It serves as a guiding framework for future filmmakers and creative practice researchers, advocating for a conscientious and socially responsible approach to storytelling that foregrounds participant agency in service of a deeper understanding and engagement with socially pertinent issues.

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic rattled educational institutions to implement an online internship arrangement with their industry partners. Journalism felt the same experience, at least in the Philippines where the government had mandated online learning given full school closures for 566 schooldays. This mixed methods study documented the case of a Philippine journalism school, its interns and its news media industry partners on how two rounds of online internship arrangements happened. The study integrated quantitative results from an internship evaluation sheet (N = 129) with qualitative findings from key informant interviews (N = 11) with journalist-mentors and from interns' reflection papers (N = 110). The situated learning and boundary theories, plus the inclusive education concept, provided the theoretical lenses for this paper. It was found that the pandemic-tailored online internship became an inclusive education setup that had normalized telework as the situated, bounded learning milieu of the interns. Should future natural and man-made disruptions come, journalism schools can resurface the lessons of conducting crisis-tailored online internships to reduce worrisome negative outcomes that a pandemic like COVID-19 wrought.