PB Live Careers Forum

Our 2nd Live Careers forum attracted a whole range of queries. Thanks to everyone that joined in – here are the responses so far!

The Panel

Paul Crompton

Paul is an experienced factual producer with 20 years’ work in TV. Executive Producer and Co-owner of Barge Pole Productions, Paul’s specialties are popular factual television, observational documentaries, formats, legals, scriptwriting, dramatic reconstruction, pitching and development.

Nicky Searle

Nicky is Talent Executive at NBCUniversal International Television Production, looking after companies as diverse as Carnival Films, Monkey Kingdom and Chocolate Media. Prior to that she managed talent for Optomen Television. She has been in the industry for nearly twenty years working her way up from her first TV role as an unpaid intern at MTV Networks.

Paul Merrick

Paul is an experienced Producer/Director with over 12 years specialising in observational documentaries and factual entertainment, including extensive self-shooting. Creative and highly motivated, he’s dedicated to making great television across all genres and passionate about storytelling.

Joe Mahoney

Joe is Managing Director of ProductionBase. Prior to joining PB, Joe spent a number of years at BBC Worldwide as a senior commissioning editor, before moving on to Channel 4 to become their Head of Commercial Development.

The Questions

Q:  I’m a British P/D and planning on moving back to UK with my cameraman partner in December after what will have been almost 4 years away. During this time we’ve been working on international docs, mainly for National Geographic. I’m just wondering what advice you can give us in terms of finding work in the current climate back home? Have things changed significantly in the past four years? It’s also worth mentioning that most of our contacts were based up north before we moved away and we’re now considering a move to London.

PM:  I think things have changed significantly over the last 4 years, with an expectation of PD’s being able to self-shoot, do sound and sometimes edit. Having to be a ‘jack of all trades’ probably means ultimately the quality of the final product is likely to suffer, whereas each specialist brings their own expertise to a production. As for working out of London, I don’t feel that matters too much as long as you are willing to travel and work away from home.

PC: If you’ve got that on your CV you shouldn’t find it too hard to get work. It will help to know where you are based and what channels and companies you worked for. Most of us find work from the contacts closest to us. Reputation is the biggest single factor in finding work in TV, in my experience.

PB Live Careers Forum

Our Live Careers forum attracted a whole range of queries. Thanks to everyone that joined in – here are the responses so far!

The Panel

Richard Nash

Richard has over 20 years experience in documentaries & factual entertainment for UK and international broadcasters. Career highlights include The Secret Millionaire, Come Dine With Me, World’s Strictest Parents, River Cottage, Jamie’s Great Britain and Fabulous Baker Brothers.

Toral Dixit

Toral is an experienced PD self-shooting on DSR / EX3 / XF305. Career highlights include: BBC (Last Man Standing, Tribal Wives, Skin Deep, Desperate Midwives), C4 (Dispatches), Discovery (Hard Labour), ITV (The Making of a Royal Wedding), C5 (Motorway Madness), National Geographic (The Return of the Clouded Leopards) and Living (Rehab).

Royston Mayoh

Roy is a Director/Producer specialising in entertainment, chalking up many successes over a 48 year career as a writer and innovator of original formats for BBC, ITV, C4, BskyB and FIVE. He directed Catchphrase and has also worked as a college lecturer. Royston has a wealth of knowledge and can offer excellent advice to new entrants.

Joe Mahoney

Joe is Managing Director of ProductionBase. Prior to joining PB, Joe spent a number of years at BBC Worldwide as a senior commissioning editor, before moving on to Channel 4 to become their Head of Commercial Development.

The Questions

Q:  For the past year I’ve been working as an online producer (basically a web editor, who works a bit with online video) for a broadcaster. My ideal role would be for a multi-platform/digital department of a production company, and I know that more and more indies are placing importance on their online remit but I rarely see these roles advertised. What do you think is the best route? Starting off with traditional entry level roles (e.g. researcher) and then later choosing multi platform as my speciality? Or just desperately knocking on the door of every production company with a dedicated department asking if they have any positions available?

RM:  It’s great that you already know that your ideal role would be for a multi-platform/digital department of a production company. The truth of the matter is that if you wait for a vacancy to be posted then you could wait longer than you wish.  As you have already been working as an online producer for a broadcaster, I should imagine that via your everyday work, being a member of PB and reading your trade papers that you will, by now, have amassed a contacts book of the sort of production companies that might, sometime in the future, need such a post, but haven’t yet got round to actually doing something about it. Don’t wait for a vacancy to pop up, make some contacts and suggest to them that when THEY decide to open a multi-platform/digital department that YOU are the one they should contact. You may well get a nice surprise, and it was YOUR idea.

TD: You don’t mention what you would like your role within multi-platform / digital companies might be. Is it in Production or Post? I would suggest that making programs for online market or broadcast via TV are similarly about good editorial content and high production values. I see that you are a recent graduate, and so would suggest that you learn your ‘craft’ along a traditional route (researcher, AP etc) and then once you have more experience under your belt, then work towards online…. unless of course you already have plenty of contacts within the online world that would allow you to apply your skills and learn on the job within the online market. I think it would be easier to move from traditional TV to online then the other way round.  You could of course write your goals in your covering letter – targeting both Production and Online companies.

RN: I’d suggest approaching broadcasters as well as production companies – they’ve got big digital departments. A lot of indies have to deliver web content, but it’s often just any extra task a series producer gets lumbered with near the end of production. I wouldn’t suggest the normal runner, researcher route – you can probably move sideways.

TV & Me

This week we catch up again with freelance Executive Producer, Claire Faragher as she discusses watching TV upside down as a child to producing one of ITV’s most successful Reality TV shows. Claire explains her obsession with TV.

Where did your career in the industry begin? Did you always want to work in TV?

I started out as a print journalist and then became a chat show producer at Anglia Television after applying successfully for a job advertised in the Guardian Media Guide. I had been obsessed with television as long as I can remember – I even went through a phase of watching television upside down (don’t ask me why – I was a child and it added variety!). So when I thought about progressing from my job as a newspaper reporter, what appealed most was using my journalistic skills for television. At Anglia TV, I also made fly-on-the-wall docs and magazine shows for a number of different channels, before joining the BBC, where I downgraded and trained up eventually as a Producer/Director before moving onto being a Deputy Editor and Series Producer.

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome whilst trying to make it in the TV industry?

Possibly getting my first break as a director. I feel that strong producers or journalists can be viewed as one trick ponies who are not very visual or can’t work across different genres. When I finally got my chance to direct and then PD it was nice to thwart such views and also get stuck in in the edit, where even today it’s nice to still be surprised with what you can do.

You’ve undertaken a lot of different roles within your career, working in editing, producing, directing and developing. Has variety been the key to your success, sanity or both?

Yes to all of the above!

Which role do you like working most in? When are you truly in your element?

I like managing large teams but still being hands on with the casting and creative input at the beginning, middle and end of the process. I have noticed from looking at my CV recently that I have helped launch a lot of series and have held key creative roles in them. There is nothing better than the buzz of making a new series or even a one off. It’s only bettered when the show is a big success. I also love solving problems and finding unusual ways of cutting and structuring things in the edit.

Top Tips on Writing Your CV

It’s around this time we start telling ourselves that we’re going to get off our backsides and start looking for that new job. And as we know, this year will be as tough if not tougher than last year so it’s essential to market yourself, your skills and experience as effectively as possible.

Following a few simple steps can make the difference in your CV standing out from the crowd and putting you in pole position to be called for that all important interview.

I’ve read many a CV over the years and it still comes as a surprise at how careless people can be with their most valuable document, the ‘passport’ to that job.

Here are some key pointers in knocking that CV into shape:

• Keep it to a maximum of 2 pages – with good editing you’ll surprised how much you can get in, even for seasoned veterans.
• The font size should be 11 or 12 point in Arial or Calibri as these are easy to read.
• No photos of yourself please – you may be gorgeous but if it’s a role behind the camera you want, then it’s simply not necessary.
• Lay it out in chronological order with your credits listed in reverse order.
• Be concise – write short sentences and avoid paragraphs.
• Target your CV to the job you’re applying for – don’t take a scattergun approach.
• List additional skills such as editing, driving licence, foreign language, scuba diving qualification – it could tip the balance in your favour over someone without these.
• Bad spelling and grammar stands out a mile and will immediately go to the reject pile. Re-read it dozens of times and always use spell-check.
• Don’t fib. It’s an incestuous place in telly land – lots of people know lots of people and in turn know lots of people…so you’ll be found out.

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ProductionBase – Insider Network for TV Jobs, Film Jobs and Commercial Production Talent

The Only Way is (Succ)Essex

The phenomenal success of TOWIE shows no signs of abating, turning some of the cast into overnight celebrities, introducing us to the vajazzle and phrases such as ‘reem and ‘well jel’. It has spawned rival copycat scripted reality shows but TOWIE remains the firm favourite with viewers (and critics alike). Claire Faragher, Series Producer on Series 1 and Executive Producer on Series 2, discusses the reason for its success.

Why do you think TOWIE was such a big hit?

We had an incredible cast of colourful (orange) characters, a lot of laughs, relationship dramas, and a unique way of filming the show, which gives it a cartoonish, hyper-real style. And then there was the high-speed and high-quality editing and structuring. The production team got to know the characters inside out and they had enough trust in us to allow us to film some of their best and worst moments. And due to the speed of turnaround the show was more reactive than anything that has come before or since in this genre (it’s a 24/7 operation). The production team worked very hard and there were a lot of brilliant people who made it such a great series. Some of us worked double shifts or more throughout, came up with the structure pre and post pilot and basically pulled off what many thought was impossible, with between three and nine HD cameras filming every scene and with at most 3.5 days to film and cut each episode. Also, ITV Marketing & Publicity gave it a massive push and at our press launch night I’ll never forget the immediacy with which the tabloids embraced our show. Oh, and not forgetting the hard work and talent of the production team I employed…have I already mentioned that??!!!

One Guardian blogger described TOWIE as “Beyond Trash TV.” How do you respond to TOWIE haters?

I have a number of favourite negative quotes about The Only Way Is Essex that make me hoot with laughter. They are:

“shallow, vain, dim people being shallow, vain and dim”
“real people playing themselves incredibly badly’”and
“fame-hungry oddballs delivering petrified forest performances” and
“The Only Way Is Essex is hilarious for about 10 minutes then you wish you were dead”

I realise that some people will always hate The Only Way Is Essex and I understand that. It’s funny because it’s actually one of, if not the toughest, genres of TV I have ever worked on and it’s certainly not as easy and as smooth as we made it look in series 1 and 2. It’s meant to be light relief and entertainment – the disclaimer says as much at the top of every show. We’re not pretending to be Newsnight.

How real is reality television?

Structured reality and reality TV aren’t quite the same thing. Look at Big Brother: from what I can see, and I am happy to be corrected, a group of people who have been cast for a specific reason and generally do not know each other all live under the same roof, with no access to the outside world and are filmed 24/7 by a fixed rig and are given tasks and challenges to do and are slowly voted off. Their reactions and emotions may be real most of the time but they will also depend on how self aware they are and how they may or may not be playing up to the camera or attempting to project an image of themselves. So when I look at reality TV I think in many respects that’s not really very real at all and a lot of things are produced within an inch of their life. And then if you look at Geordie Shore you can see it’s related to BB as they have fixed rig but they also have hand held cameras and the cast have access to the outside world too. But they do have someone giving them tasks to do. But even if a situation, night out or conversation has been given a helping producer’s hand there is still a lot of scope for scenes and sequences to play out in a more observational way and it’s mainly shot in that way. The cast also do interviews talking about events that have occurred in the past/present tense and appear to be happy to talk about each other positively or negatively safe in the knowledge that the show will transmit at a much later date. This could possibly be termed ‘constructed reality’ or ‘constructed factual’. And I know when I made a series called Last Man Standing that some people deemed that to be ‘constructed reality’. (Although we took them to places further afield than the Bigg Market!)

Have you used your 3 minute media upload allowance?

Every PB member now gets 3 minutes of media upload time as part of the standard package. Uploading media to your profile allows employers to instantly view your work without having to navigate away from the site.

Utilise this by uploading a showreel and/or some images. Here are few pointers!

• Upload media which supports your current work ambitions and strengths.
• You don’t have to be the director to upload the clip.
• Title and Tag your media in the most appropriate way.
• Use the Playlist creator to put together collections of work.
• Expose your media by sharing it with others.

Members can upgrade to the Plus package at anytime to enjoy 4 hours of media upload exposure. To learn more about uploading media to your profile click here.

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ProductionBase – Insider Network for TV Jobs, Film Jobs and Commercial Production Talent

A TX experience with accompanying Tweets

This week, award winning documentary film maker, Elizabeth Stropford, discusses how her latest C4 documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ was received on Twitter, and what a “real time” response means from a filmmaker’s perspective.

Watching my latest documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ go out on Channel 4 was a novel experience because its transmission was punctuated by an ongoing commentary – courtesy of twitter.

The ‘water cooler effect’ of people talking about your show afterwards has now been superseded by the immediacy of being able to ‘listen in’ on what people make of it in real time.

I’d spent over 6 months producing the documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ through Rare Day for Channel 4. The Johnsons had twenty years of happy marriage, professional success, a lovely home, blond-haired children. They were nicknamed the ‘Sunday Supplement family’ by locals, and appeared to have it all. Then one day, Nick Johnson, told his wife he had a surprise for her, led her blindfolded into the garden, and committed an awful act of violence.

As a filmmaker building a relationship with the family, I was very aware of the weight of responsibility in handling such sensitive material. The mum, dad and two boys had each developed ways of avoiding the crux of the ”incident” that had shattered their family idyll 7 years earlier.

Made through the eyes of the eldest son, Henry, ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ is much more about the failure of communication in the aftermath than the attack itself. But a preview feature in the Guardian – headlined ”THE DAY DAD TOOK AN AXE TO MUM” – made me realise that once it is out there, it is out there, and people will interpret it as they will. Bluntly, in this case.

So the response in the Twittersphere was fascinating for me. First up, I was both amused and bemused to read several young females piling in – in the midst of this shocking story, to share their rather personal views:

”I know this is bad but I’m watching ‘we need to talk about dad’, its sad, but all I can think about is how the son is hot”.

”Watching ‘we need to talk about dad’ – really gripping c4 doc, shouldn’t really say this but henry is gorgeous! I just wanna comfort him x_x”

”Watching this and all I am wondering is how could such a f***ed up father give birth to two such beautiful sons?!…”

Fortunately this wasn’t the only talking point. I was encouraged to hear people reflect, too, on what they would do in this extraordinary situation…

”We need to talk about Dad – bizarre! I would never take back anyone who cracked my head open with an axe, let alone make them Xmas dinner!”

”watching we need to talk about dad, why would you let someone who tried to kill your mum back into your life #weird”

”I’m watching ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’. Fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Are we all capable of doing something so terrible?”

”I have just watched ‘we need to talk about dad’. What an amazing family. No judgement-xx”

”Feeling a lot better about my life!…”

Some of these hit at the heart of the issues. It was good to hear people grapple with – and try to relate to – the family’s predicament. Then there were those who didn’t seem to know what was going on at all…

”I’m watching ‘we need to talk about dad’ and I’m slightly confused”.

It was unclear to me whether this person meant ”confused” in a good way. I assume not. But it’s possible that if he/she paid more attention to the TV rather than tweets about how fit the son is, he/she would have a better idea?!…

As a filmmaker, it can be excruciating to know that your viewer is most likely making a cup of tea, sending a text message and checking out other domestic homicide cases on their ipad, while simultaneously watching your programme. I suppose, as we toil away in edit suites for hours on end, we have to operate under the delusion that people will really be watching, otherwise we’d become slapdash and just plaster the whole thing in commentary (I think the penny must have dropped for a good few producers, as an increasing number seem to be taking up this far more sensible approach).

Want to Remove the Accountancy Pain From Your Life?

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How it works:

• Unlike a traditional accountancy firm, Crunch is geared to your needs, not the accountant.
• They remove every single task so you’ll be able to focus on what you’re good at – making programmes.
• You’ll get your very own account manager – that is with you every step of the way.
• From the quick setup process or simple transfer from your old accountant, to looking after all that boring paperwork from HMRC and Companies House.
• You’ll have an expert accountant to talk to, precisely when you need them – especially when you know you are not being charged by the minute.
• They are there to answer all your accountancy and tax questions as well as checking everything you do is correct before it’s submitted.
• Designed for the non-accounting mind, its one of the easiest accounting systems available.
• You’ll be sending invoices in minutes, dropping in expenses and seeing the health of your business instantly.

To find out more, visit Crunch – Online Accounting

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ProductionBase – Insider Network for TV Jobs, Film Jobs and Commercial Production Talent

Freelancer of the Year Awards – Nominate that Unsung Hero

The summer is drawing to a close (boo…), the days are starting to feel a tad colder (double boo…) so it can only mean one thing; it’s the start of the awards season.

Here at PB towers, we are delighted to announce that nominations are now open for this year’s Freelancer of the Year Awards. As in previous years, it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the talent of some of the unsung heroes in television and film production – we all know who they are; they do lots (and lots) of hard work, make things happen, always have a smile on their face and still have time for everyone else while their social life takes a back seat (well, more like the spare seat… in the boot).

There are four categories that cover the first jobber to the seasoned veteran so there’s no excuse for anyone to miss out:.

Runner of the Year – A runner that has made a fantastic contribution to the production team. Puts in the hours, is there for everyone and does much more than make great tea.

Outstanding Freelancer of the Year – Someone that has made exceptional contribution to a production, did way and above the job description and made the difference.

Production Manager of the Year – Sometimes the unsung hero – this person put together a great team, was the glue to making the production happen, was always on hand and was the calm head in a sea of anxiety.

Beyond the Call of Duty – The person is an inspiration to those around them – has nurtured people through their careers, given great guidance and been selfless in getting the very best out of people. Is the real star in most people’s eyes.

We all know people that would fit into one of these categories, perhaps you have someone in your team that deserves a pay rise because of the effort and hours they have put in but the budget won’t stretch that far? A colleague you know that is the lynchpin to everything that happens, they have a few days leave and while away the world looks like it will cave in? Certain jobs simply don’t get done because this person knows where everything is, how everything works and where the bodies are buried?

If you know someone like this then why not show your appreciation by putting them forward for one of the above categories.

As in previous years, we have an esteemed panel of judges from the world of television, print media and production and the awards will be hosted by Matt Allwright.

The closing date is October 15th so please hurry and get those entries in.

The nominees and winners will be announced at our networking event at The Hospital Club on Thursday 17th November.

Further details of the event to follow – so watch this space!

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ProductionBase – Insider Network for TV Jobs, Film Jobs and Commercial Production Talent

Get people caught in your own web(site)

 

Since we launched the fantastic new upgrades to your membership, we have had a great response, in particular, to the inclusion of your own website.

It’s a fantastic way to showcase your profile and as its part of your PB package, saves you lots of dosh on running and maintaining your own site.

But are you utilising it to its full potential? Here are a few key reminders of getting the best out of it:

Make sure you add the URL to your email signature and business card – it increases the potential of production companies contacting you.

• Your website can be accessed by anyone at anytime.
• Employers and colleagues do not need to be logged into PB or be active members to see your site.
• Your website can be searched via the various search engines in the usual way.
• The content displayed replicates your internal PB profile so there is no need to write duplicate information.
• You’re in control! If for any reason you want to go incognito, you can use your Privacy Settings to restrict the information people see about you.

As always, the PB team are on hand to take you through any questions you may have on this great new facility, so give us a bell if you need profile and set up advice.

020 7935 5378 or email: info@productionbase.co.uk

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ProductionBase – Insider Network for TV Jobs, Film Jobs and Commercial Production Talent