Studying the stories we tell
“For me, the Bachelor of Communication felt like a no-brainer,” says Samuel Chitty, now a Master of Communication student at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. “It felt like the perfect way to keep engaging with English, history, design, and media studies, which were subjects I loved in school.”
Samuel finished his Bachelor of Communication, majoring in Literary and Creative Communication, at the end of 2022.
“Majoring in Literary and Creative Communication gave me the freedom to study a wide range of communication types and texts, and I’ve discovered many films, books, poems, and essays that are now among my favourites,” Samuel says. “We studied in-depth how and why stories are told.”
Samuel says in every course he was able to choose what topics and texts he wanted to focus on—it was very flexible. This resulted in his assignments being on everything from Aotearoa’s lack of political cinema to our hidden quizzing industry, and they took every form from essays and presentations to television pitch decks and even a fictitious news article set within the world of a science fiction text.
“To be able to pursue my passions was hugely rewarding—my total undergraduate body of work is just shy of 150,000 words, so it was important to be able to research and write about the things that I cared about.”
The Bachelor of Communication ends with a capstone project that both reflects the passions of the student and helps them demonstrate everything they learned during the whole degree. Samuel chose to express his passion for Aotearoa New Zealand storytelling by writing a series of excerpts from a book-length creative non-fiction text about the ways Aotearoa’s native bush has been represented in the stories we tell.
“It was intended to expose readers to new texts, remind them of old favourites, and provide them with new ways of connecting Aotearoa New Zealand’s canon of national storytelling. The chapters I wrote included ‘What Lives Within’, which looked at the bush creatures — living, extinct, invented, and in-between — of various shapes and sizes that have featured in bush tales over time, as well as ‘The Bush as a Site of Escape’, which examined how the bush is commonly placed in opposition to civilisation and is a magnet for ‘man alone’ characters.”
After finishing his final courses, Samuel had the opportunity for another exciting experience because of his degree—an internship at South Pacific Pictures, who make Shortland Street.
Samuel spent the summer working as part of their Communication and Publicity Department. He assisted with photoshoots, helped with marketing, created social content, and helped update South Pacific Pictures’ archives about Shortland Street—updating registries on every social issue, wedding, birth, death, and cliff-hanger to have featured over the show’s 30-year history.
“The research skills I gained from my degree really helped me in this work, particularly in updating the archives,” Samuel says. “I also gained a lot of practical skills from my degree, like writing media releases or social media posts, which came in handy during my internship.”
After returning from his internship, Samuel started studying for a Master of Communication at the University.
“I’ve loved studying in Wellington,” he says. “I think Victoria University of Wellington strikes the balance between top quality courses, a healthy student culture, and a city that I think is the best city in the whole of Aotearoa.”
Samuel looks forward to using his Master’s to further look at New Zealand screen cultures. After that, he hopes to pursue a career that involves New Zealand media and storytelling.
“Just as it is overseas, our local media landscape is changing rapidly, so it’s hard to even visualise the types of roles that will be available in the next five, ten, or fifteen years—but I feel confident that wherever I land, I’ve got the right skills to make a go of it.”