TV a Family Affair

Right I'm fresh faced and just out of university and have to decide where I want to live.

London would be the obvious choice. It's fast paced, lots of work, plenty of networking opportunities and lots of TV companies. It's also expensive, I don't know anyone there and  did I mention it was expensive? No? Well it is expensive.

I lived in the Midlands at this point and there was not much going on there. The Mailbox had just opened but no TV companies where using it so I had to look elsewhere.

Whilst at University there had been rumours of the BBC selling up and moving to a new site in Manchester. Manchester was cheap, it had a TV studios that was producing work and lots of independent companies too. I'm sure one will give me a job. I thought I'd get established up there, get to know people up north, get the industry to know me, and when the BBC do move there I'll get a job with them easily. I'll know the area and it will be prefect!

So I set about moving to Manchester. Looking for jobs and trying to network.

TV a Family Affair

This is easier said then done. Not the moving to Manchester that was easy, it was the networking and job hunting that was difficult. Unless you have a sister, brother, mother, father, aunty, uncle or next doors pet orangutang working in the industry already its difficult to get your foot in the door. It really is a family affair. Just in the one production house you have numerous amounts of fathers and sons, uncles and daughters working along side each other, all helping each other get a job on the next production.

Finally there was an advert online for runners on a new talk show in Manchester. I spend hours filling out the application form and wait to hear back. Nothing....... And then a phone call I hadn't got the job but would I like to come in for Work Experience.

Work experience is the word we all dread both sides of the barrel. If you are being offered work experience you dread it because it will involve you working your butt off for hours making tea and proving yourself for free. Thats right no pay and no guarantee of a job at the end of it. The other side of the barrel is if you are employing a work ex its a nightmare, they invariably don't want to be there but have been forced to find work as part of there college course and will want you to fill in an evaluation of them after. Or they really want you to employ them so are over keen and annoying. Asking questions and talking about themselves to much. The key is to strike a happy medium between being keen and asking the right amount of questions.

If I'm going to get my foot in the door though I'm going to have to do it, its for a one of the UK's leading channels and hopefully I'll make some links and found out better places to look for work.

So off to work I go.

You work in TV....WOW it must be so glamorous.

"So what do you do?"

"I work in TV."
"Wow that must be so glamorous all those celebrities, and lights."

Whenever you meet someone new and they ask about your job it can go one of two ways, if they work in TV too you get the look of sympathy. The 'you too look', the look of I want to be your friend to tap you up for a job later on. Or if they don't work in TV the look of awe. They think its amazing, exciting and even "Glamorous".

Well its NOT!

No Green rooms piled high with free food

 Its long hours, late nights, early mornings and little pay. There's no rubbing shoulders with the stars at celeb parties and no green room stuffed to the ceiling with endless supplies of free food and drink, instead there's a  pre-packed stale Tesco sandwich which you had to go and bulk buy from the supermarket and  trudged back to the studio for everyone to eat. And if your lucky you get twenty minutes to sit and eat before dragging yourself back to the job at hand. Endless standing around in the cold and wet, hire cars that don't work and fighting with the tax man for a rebate because you have 15 P45's for the year all of which have emergency taxed you, and thats if your not self employed when you have to work out your own tax and national insurance. But why do we do it you ask?

We do it for that one moment where your name comes up on the credits at the end of the show and you get excited and make sure all your friends have seen it. We do it because what else could we do?

We meet new people, work on things we are proud of (and some we are not!). In my future blogs I will tell you the tales from the industry the glam and the not so glam aspects of working in TV.  To come there are Ghosts, Ramsgate, Talk shows, roof tops, kids art shows, auditions, dating shows, and much more...

Stay tuned......

Television not for everyone

Having worked in TV for 6 years, I have many stories about my time in the industry, its taken me a long time to get where I am today (mainly because I don't have a family member in the industry already to get my foot in the door) and I have had some funny experiences along the way. So where do I start?

At the beginning I suppose. At the ripe old age of 18 I had to choose which university I wanted to attend. All that pressure on one so young. What do you want to study, where do you want to go, what do you want to do for a job for the rest of your life, what are your career progression plans, which universities will even accept you?

I decided I liked doing amateur dramatics and art, so what university course can I do?

Performing arts? Well the acting industry is far to difficult to get into and there are way to many people in it sat at home waiting for the phone to ring with that one job as a character in Coronation Street. And anyway could I deal with all that rejection? No was the answer and so I kept looking for that ideal course.

Forever dressing him up as a girl and calling him Katie

Maybe I could write plays. I liked making up stories and acting them out. My sister and I were forever dressing my brother up as a girl and calling him Katie and acting out stories in the back garden. So thats it then. I need a course that offers Script writing.

Trawling through prospectuses and shiny brochures I find two courses that sound right for me. One is creative writing. Good I thought but doesn't offer anything else if I don't like it and its in Cardiff. I have nothing against the Welsh but do I really want to live in Wales?

The other course is Film Production Technology, one of the modules is Script writing but there is other stuff to it, like cameras and presenting and web design. This one is ideal I get to try script writing and if I don't like it there is other options that encompass my other passions, art and acting.

So thats it I'm off to university to do Film Production Technology. Three years of my life taken up with drinking, playing hockey, drinking, hockey tours, drinking oh and lectures.

To cut a long story short I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Film Production Technology, £12,000 of student loan debt and a new career plan.

Whilst doing the course I hated the script writing module and decided it wasn't for me, I'm more a spontaneous improviser than a structured writer. But I did enjoy the camera modules and decided I want to be a Camera Operator.

So thats it then I'm going to be a Camera Woman now who's going to give me a job.