The return of Transatlantic Storytelling is officially underway as 16 Ball State students have been selected to participate in the second iteration of the award-winning project with Cardiff Met University in Cardiff, Wales.
The highlight of the project will be a 12-day cultural immersion trip to Wales in late February and early March 2024. While on the ground, students will collaborate with their peers in the Cardiff Met Sport Broadcast course to produce feature stories, live sporting events, studio shows and podcasts.
Tristan Fluhr (Junior)
I am interested in Transatlantic Storytelling because it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tell great stories in another country. At this stage of a producer’s career, this experience is invaluable. This is an opportunity to expand our horizons and take the skills we have learned at Ball State and test them in the field and in another country.
The country of Wales has such a rich history, but a relatively quiet sports scene to the greater world and I want to highlight the history of one of the oldest countries in Europe and their amazing teams, athletes, and fanbases. I want to test myself and this is a great chance to do that. This is also a kind of validation to myself that I am able to produce outside of the Ball State and Sports Link programs.
I have always been a storyteller. From the time I was able to talk, I was telling stories.
When I started at Ball State, I wanted to go into sports broadcast talent. But in the process of chasing my talent dream, I fell in love with producing. Documentaries, Live Broadcasts, Feature Stories, Creative Videos… if you can name it, I want to produce it.
I believe I have a unique mix of creativity and logic that serves me well in the producer’s chair. I have produced live productions for ESPN+ as a member of Sports Link, as well as produced feature stories.
This past summer, I had a change of scenery and moved to Minot, North Dakota, where I was the Director of Live Event Broadcasting for the Minot Hot Tots of the Northwoods League.
I learned so much valuable information from my time in Minot and have put that into practice in my everyday life. Another part of my moral compass is my time in Scouts BSA, where I reached the rank of Eagle Scout before my 18th birthday. It is that mix of leadership, logic, and creativity that drives me every day.
I hope to achieve to tell stories that aren’t just beautiful to watch, but have the depth that this project should require. I think that depth may have to come from thinking outside of the box, but as I have learned in the past six months, thinking outside of the box on a feature or story is a great thing!
Another goal that I have from being part of this project is to work and interact with people in the industry that aren’t in the “bubble” of Ball State – or American Sports for that matter. At Ball State and in the world of American Sports, athletes and teams are used to feature stories and they know how to react to those interviews. With these athletes in Cardiff, they may be less experienced in these formal interview settings, which could lead to better interviews or it could lead to us having to be better interviewers. I think both of those are positive and are good learning situations.
Tristan Fluhr