School of Digital Arts (SODA) Filmmaking student Jayden Roy Crooks recently created a series of stunning visuals that were displayed throughout Manchester Psych Fest 2024.

Manchester Psych Fest is an annual inner-city festival that sees hundreds of artists take over venues across the city. This year’s festival featured major global artists such as Baxter Dury, The Horrors and BC Camplight as well as a range of emerging acts from across the UK and beyond.

Jayden’s work was played on multiple stages and on SODA’S LED façade throughout the day. This work completed his six month internship with the festival, working to briefs to create a range of social media teasers and festival-ready video artwork.

Talking on the internship, Jayden Roy Crooks said: “Getting this internship to work with Psych Fest for 6 months was an amazing opportunity to apply the skills I have taught myself and apply it to a big festival in Manchester with amazing artists. It has been surreal. Whilst working on this project I have been able to expand my knowledge on postproduction compositing. The constant briefs for short form social media and producing content for live visuals has allowed me to explore different visual techniques and integrating stylistic compositing skills within Adobe After Effects. Additionally, working Psych Fest has given me the comfort to work with brands and there consistency styles”.

“This internship…has given me the comfort to work with brands and there consistent styles”

“Psych Fest wanted to reimagine some of their artwork on there social media platforms and the live visuals and I know I have achieved that. My approach going into the short form social media videos was to make it fast, slick and engaging. I got set out 12 Briefs and wanted to rack up engagements and present a unique style to Psych Fest, looking through the statistics I’m proud of the feat I pulled off. For the live visuals, I was asked to create 4 sets of media centring around a woman with no memories and following a patch of mind-bending self-discovery journey within her psyche. She encounters various artists, each representing different facets of creativity which help her build and redefine her identity. I executed this using my knowledge of blender, UR, After effects and photoshop”.

This internship was made possible due to SODA’s ongoing partnership with Manchester Psych Fest. Jayden said: “I’m very thankful to SODA for offering this internship out to me through my first year. It has created a solid foundation for me to manage projects simultaneously which was vital within this internship”.

You can view some of Jayden Roy Crooks’ work on the SODA Instagram page.