STOIC: Imperial’s student run TV station

“STOIC, you’re the philosophy society right?” Is a question I receive many times throughout the course of the year. The latest being at Freshers’ Fair while standing in front of a large AutoCue, professional video camera and a TV playing a showreel of our best bits. While I do have a particular love of 3rd century BCE philosophy that isn’t what the club is about. STOIC in fact is an acronym of Student Television of Imperial College, and that’s exactly who we are. From our studios in the West Basement of Beit Quad we write, film, present and produce a wide variety of television shows that get broadcast online. Our longest running show is IC News, which has existed in various forms for as long as the society has, but that’s far from all we produce. Last year alone we had interviews, documentaries, short films and even some Eastern European political satire. This year is looking even more exciting than the last, with a few exciting press opportunities coming up this term alone. The most popular show we currently produce is the infamous Metric Moments videos, which I’m sure many of you have seen or even starred in. If not then head over to our YouTube to find out what some of the brightest minds in the country think of the important issues in the world, ranging from Barack Obama’s re-election to “brown nipples”, “cross-fucking”, and “American ‘gine”. In the Spring term large amounts of our time is devoted to our two biggest events of the year; The Big Elections and the JPR Williams Cup match at Varsity. For The Big Elections we produce a live hustings show, where all the candidates for the sabbatical positions get a chance to convince you why to vote for them. Hearing 20 people talk about “transparency”, “accessibility” and “contactless payment” never gets old. The JPR Williams Cup is contested with a rugby match between Imperial and Imperial Medicals, and last year we filmed this with a large scale 4 camera shoot for the first time. This then got released as both a highlights package and a full match reel complete with excellent commentary from IC Radio. Getting involved with STOIC is really easy; absolutely no experience is required to jump right in. Whether you’re interested in filming, presenting, acting, editing, writing or just want to see what goes in in a student TV station you’re more than welcome to join. As well as being helped to improve in any field you’re interested in you’ll also be able to get involved with some incredible opportunities; last year we had a phone conversation with Sir Roger Moore while trying to set up an interview. So if you think STOIC is something you might be interested in visit our website at www.stoictv.com or www.youtube.com/stoictv and you can get involved with (probably) the only society at Imperial to have interviewed Mark Hamill, Carol Vorderman, and Chuck Norris.