Week 2: Concept and Production Skills Development (Cinematography)

This week I attended some industry professionals in webinars, improved my individual learning agreement form and completed the newly launched media passport created by my university in order to hire out kit.

Industry Professionals Webinars:

This week I attended a few of these industry professionals talk about their work in industry, how they got in their position and about some helpful tips and things to avoid. These people include: Tony Stark, Sacha Clayton and Lee Sanders.

Tony Stark- He runs Moonstone Films - a company that makes investigative documentaries and current affairs programmes.His broadcast experience covers commissioning, executive producing and an extensive career in documentary film-making. He has been Head of Documentaries at BBC Arabic where he commissioned a range of long-form investigative documentaries. And, as a documentary film-maker, he has spent over 20 years producing and directing programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and for a variety of American PBS channels.

Sacha Clayton- Graduated from BATV in 2018 and has since worked on The Grand Tour, Celebs Go Dating, TOWIE, and most recently as a researcher on Top Gear. He is currently a researcher on A League Of Their Own Road Trip.

Lee Sanders- Graduated from BATV in 2015 will be dropping in online on Monday as soon as he has finished directing the 1130 Channel 4 News bulletin. Lee directs and vision-mixes for ITV and Channel 4 News at ITN. He has worked across all areas of the coverage including special events. Previously Lee worked at The Walt Disney Company in the Nordic Production Department as a Camera Operator, Sound Recordist & Editor.

What I Deduced From The Talks:

Overall, the talks I found very helpful in providing me further insight specific positions and roles in the industry and how the industry works from their perspectives. I found it fascinating how they each took different paths to get to where they were and opened up some thoughts to myself about maybe following these steps or taking onboard more opportunities. Something Lee said which was something I have seen come up frequently is to be showing your passion by putting in the extra hours or extra curricular work outside of your study. I thought this was very important as I agree everyone will get a degree but what you do outside your time is what will make you unique. I believe that I have been doing this with my YouTube channel and think I should carry on creating content outside of university work. I was also interested by Sacha and how he got into 'Top Gear' as its a show and genre of TV I would very much like to work in the future. Finally, I admired what Tony was saying about some useful information about the commissioning process which I am now much more fully aware of.

Individual Learning Agreement Form:

From last week I have made amendments to this form by cutting out information, being more specific and changing my viewing and reading list to something more appropriate to help me with my learning journey. Here is a screengrab of this updated version below:

Media Skills Passport:

This week I also viewed and completed The Media Skills Passport which 'is a system of learning resources and tests, designed to guide you through some of the fundamental skills and knowledge relating to working on media-based productions'. I found it to give me new knowledge of industry equipment use and safety which I didn't realise in the past starting university. In addition it also provided me with overall a better view about how to stay safe on set, respect equipment and how to use some new equipment that I maybe using in the future.