#WeeklyWrapUpJess

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 6

Monday

Today we had lots of different talks from people working at News UK. As the company has multiple newspaper subsidiaries we found out how different areas worked. We were told the many different routes that they took to get into journalism and as always they all seemed to just fall into journalism rather than it being something they purposely went towards.

Tuesday

We had another full day but this time with lots of people from Hearst. This was another media conglomerate so had many different subsidiaries for us to look at. We had one task finding a way to promote a new workout trainer where our team chose to use Chloe Ting to help promote. The other was to make a new website or magazine where we went with a sustainability focused website, although this plan was almost every groups idea too.

Wednesday

Today we had a masterclass with The Guardian talking with lots of people in different roles. We heard from writers, editors and producers and how each of them ended up at The Guardian along with the breadth of jobs in their different areas. It was a short and sweet session and gave me a lot to think about.

Thursday

We spent the morning doing mentee training to find out how to be the best mentee we can be and what to expect from our mentors. The afternoon we met all the mentors with everyone doing a 60 second introduction to themselves. It didn’t end up being as bad as I thought because 60 seconds passes so quickly but it ended up being a pretty fun afternoon learning more about each other.

Friday

We had Searchlight back again with them giving us interview tips. They gave us information on what to expect from the interviews we’re going on. It was an enjoyable morning and gave us tips I’m sure I’ll take with me along with trying to figure out what biscuit I am or what my theme song is.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 4

Even before this week starting I’m so excited for this week out of everything. I ended up spending 10 years of my life so far learning about the media industry as a whole and narrowing that down to film and television it feels crazy to me, considering I always kind of thought I’d end up as a teacher. I could not wait for this week so I'm glad I enjoyed it as much as I did otherwise I'd be regretting all my life choices so far.

Monday

Today we spent the whole day with the BBC talking to investigative journalists and producers that work there. We each needed to come prepared with an idea that could be turned into a story. I choose the issue of Type 1 Diabetes cases being linked to COVID as an autoimmune disease it can be triggered by such infections. My sister was actually diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 27 about 4 years ago, which in itself is strange as most people will get Type 1 when they are children. She was hospitalised after going into a Diabetic Ketoacidosis Coma after getting a cold that triggered the autoimmune disease, which was shocking for us considering our family don’t have any history of diabetes. I thought this was a really interesting topic to look into because a scenario like this can increase the likelihood of more people getting diabetes as the diagnosis cases almost doubled at the peak of the epidemic.

We also spoke with Vinnie Shergill, a producer on Strictly Come Dancing, talking through her career and how she got to where she is. Along with this she gave her advice for interviews and made sure to tell us to do our homework on the company before being interviewed.

Tuesday

This was such a good day getting to learn about a lot of job roles within Warner Media and finding out how shows such as Repair Shop and Glow Up are actually filmed. Today and yesterday did cement my love of television production and I think although film will always be something I love but TV is the area I would rather work in. We started with The Repair Shop getting insights from Sian Bantock, a set producer, and Chandler Hollobone, an AP, camera and sound technician. Getting direct information from 2 people working in an area of TV that I would love to work in was so useful just finding out how they got to where they are now.

We then went on to Food Unwrapped talking with Glenn Swift, a series producer, and Ayaan Ahmed, an AP. They had us break into groups for topics that could be featured on Food Unwrapped, our group was given drinks and we looked at scorpions and snakes in alcohol. Looking into this topic was interesting although very disgusting considering snakes are sometimes put into the bottles alive to drown where in one instance someone was actually bitten by the snake from the bottle.

We then went on to talking with Sophie Doyle and Anna MacCormick, who are both production coordinators. They talked with us through all of the documentation they need to complete and take with them on shoots. I’ve worked with call sheets and schedules before but having a run down on them from these two was a great reminder.

We then moved onto First Dates with Jamie Merrins and Jon Crisp and how they actually cast for the show. We had 3 tasks with them the first was to get 3 ideas for dream characters, dream backstories and dream love/loss stories. Our second task was to get 15 questions that we could ask during the casting process of their dating experiences. Finally we needed to come up with a dream casting for one of their previous cast member Freddie after watching his introduction video.

Our final session we had Leah Caffrey and Zinia Scroggs, producers for Glow Up. They gave us information on how they film the series and how long it roughly takes to film each episode. Our task for them was to come up with a professional assignment for the MUAs and then link it to a creative brief challenge. Our idea for the professional assignment was to have the MUAs completing looks for backing dancers in a music video or for a festival. Our creative brief was to then have them take their favourite music genre, artist or song and create a makeup look to represent that. We also were shown the first few minutes of the new series and needed to create a rough script for the voice over in order to introduce the series.

Wednesday

We had a session with Matty Groves on the Art of Filming in regard to documentary making and each talked about an item that has meaning for us. I really enjoyed this session because I love documentaries and at university instead of writing a dissertation actually made a documentary so going back to that format is always something I love doing. He talked us through the basics of documentary making and our homework from this was to create our own documentary based on an item of importance to us.

Thursday

Today we had UKTV with us having an introduction to their company and what it takes to work in their company. Our main time in this masterclass was spent creating our own TV channel service with help from someone from UKTV. We were teamed with Becca Hollister and came up with a channel for women showing women led or created shows for young and older audience by including I Love Lucy, Bewitched and Golden Girls but also having newer comedies such as Fleabag, Chewing Gum and Miranda. Also being a group of only women we decided that working with an idea based around women worked the best with us because we could relate the most to. We called W.I.T. for the reason of women in comedy do tend to use more witty comedy as a whole and to use the acronym Women In Television so that there was a duel purpose. Our channel was to blend and unify 2 generations and it can grow as women make more comedy as at the moment women write only 16% of comedy so it could encourage a development. We had to pitch our ideas Dragon’s Den style, which was terrifying, but our group won but I loved this idea and I am actually quite sad it doesn’t already exist.

Friday

We spent today with Samantha O’Neill from Sphere London who gave us loads of advice with our job searches and employability tips. She gave us some websites to look at for jobs and told us that before going for interviewing connecting and researching the company does show them you’re being proactive.

The second part of the day we had Yasmin and Lisa from Channel 4 giving us advice into applying for Channel 4 and what they offer as a company. We spent the next part of the session casting for a new series of The Celebrity Circle and picking 2 celebrities that we think would work well on the format.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 3

This week was the start of the long sessions but I was so excited to start! Social media has been something I stepped back from last year and only started using again in the last couple of month so it did mean a bit of retraining was needed for me before this week.

Monday

We spent the morning with Cara Evans from Penguin Random House learning about how social media is used in relation to advertising books for different demographics and how it can differ between organic content and adverts. For these different areas we went into groups with a book each and came up with social media campaigns both organic and paid for. It was fun working in a group because we were able to bounce ideas around in order to get the most appropriate idea for the book. I loved that we were able to choose a book after this too because you can never have too many.

Tuesday

We spent the morning watching each other’s cultural tribes from the first week. It was a really good way to get to know people and gain an insight to each other in 60 seconds, which really flies by when you’re doing it.

The second half of the day we spent with TikTok getting talks from Emma Smith, Alessandra Mariani and Thuy Tao. This was a really good session because they all brought such a positive energy to it and all seemed really happy to be there talking about it. At the end of the session we had to make a TikTok for #dontmakeads taking a product in our house and making a TikTok with it. I was creatively stumped and ended up just making a hot chocolate because it was the first thing I found in my kitchen honestly. I know it’s not the best thing I’ve ever created but the outcome meant a good hot chocolate and nobody can be opposed to that.

Wednesday

Today was a full day with Adam and Eugene from Snapchat learning about all of their AR technology and how they use it for advertising. We were shown some examples of how they’d advertised for different companies before like Ralph Lauren and Adidas. From this we split into groups and needed to come up with a way to use the Snapchat AR to advertise Levi’s new sustainable collection. In the same way as Monday working together and bouncing our ideas around made for a better campaign than if we’d be working individually as we were able to bring our knowledge and viewpoints together and improve the campaign as a whole.

Thursday

This may have just been my favourite session this week! I was expecting it to be a bit laborious if I’m being honest because Facebook isn’t a platform I use that often or even scroll through mindlessly. We has talks from Laurian Osbourne, Josh King, Joe De Freitas and Lucy Gabbie in the morning session then in the afternoon we had Sammy King for the Instagram section, Genna and Ally Owen from the Brixton Finishing School finishing up with Niamh Cusack for a career and job advice session. Just writing all of this is exhausting because we went through so much information. They all gave their stories as to how they got where they are now with Joe and Lucy both echoing the sentiment of not giving up if you don’t succeed your first try along with Naimh who said that being your authentic self is the best way to get where you want. My favourite part though Ally saying that having a polite tantrum is sometimes the best way to get what you want.

Friday

We spent the morning with Amy, Victoria and Suzanne from Searchlight recruitment talking about our CV and Cover Letters. This was still quite useful because everybody says different things about how it should be structured and what should or shouldn’t be included. Hearing from a media specialist agency meant that I was taking on more of their advice with how to format both documents and what to include.

In the afternoon we had talks from Monica Manoras, Lee Leborgne, Rob Williamson, Jasmine Khan and Reece Brown all from Twitter. We started off talking mainly about twitter itself and the new features soon to be or recently implemented on the app. Each of the speakers talked to us about their personal experience getting into their job with Twitter and what their job actually includes which was really interesting because I didn’t think there would be as many creative jobs within Twitter as it seems a more linear website.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 1

This week was both nerve-wracking and exciting because I had no idea what to fully expect. The first day was mainly just us getting to know each other and the basic outline of the next 10 weeks.

The second was all about mental wellbeing and mental health with how to take care of yourself through hard moments and when it gets stressful. The main part I took away from this was in our talk with Ore Ogungbayi, she was so positive and uplifting and gave us so much advice in how to deal with anything we go through in our lives, whether its having T.E.A. or knowing how to deal with your own stress tank. I also really enjoyed our session with Holly Warren on meditation as I used to meditate daily and ended up stopping when I felt like there wasn’t time. This made me realise that even if I only have 10 minutes I can still do a small meditation rather than trying to commit to a long length of time for it or nothing.

The third day was spent on our cultural tribes and we all shared which cultural tribes we belonged to allowing us to get to know each other better. This was more fun than I expected it to be hearing everyone’s tribes and seeing where we are similar.

The final day of the week was spent on starting to write our vision letters and personal bios. The vision letter was essentially us trying to manifest what we want our lives to be like in a years time. The personal bio should help us match with a mentor who can get to know who we are in a concise document to know how they can help us.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 7

Monday

In the morning we talked through what to expect with the graduation and picking roles with which masterclass we want to talk about.

We spent the afternoon with Leo Young, the founder and creative director of Good Nugget. He gave us an introduction to his company and why he started it in the first place along with looking into branding itself and how strong certain brands are with their branding. The last part of the masterclass he gave us the task of finding 8 ideas in 8 minutes that a glass can be used for. I think this was a really fun task because that pressured situation is sometimes where the best ideas come from. I think a lot of us had similar ideas like a candle holder and a vase, some of my other ideas were using it as a filter for a camera or painting them, putting lights in them and then putting them in a garden as a border to a path.

Tuesday and Wednesday

On the first day with Initiative we went through their business as a whole going through everyone’s jobs and the roles they play within the company. We went through 2 different campaign briefs, Amazon and Carlsberg, and had to discuss how we would advertise their new products.

The second day with Initiative we briefly went through the company again as a reminder and went into the main brief being the Lego campaign. We got into the same groups as the day before and needed to advertise for Lego adults and raise awareness for it paying particular attention to nostalgia. We went with a Pleasure is Pain because we all know how awful it feels to step on a piece of Lego. We planned 3 parts of the campaign being promote, present and play. Through the promote section we had a series of TV adverts planned that could then be shortened and put on social media sites. Our present section was focused around having live builds with celebrities that you can build with at home such as David Beckham. We were also thinking to have a relay build where people come in and add their own sections to the build while giving donations from sales and donations from the streams to charity. We also wanted to collaborate with TikTok creators and encourage people to share their builds via #startedfromthebottom. Our final section is the play aspect, this is where we want people to go out to our events at Boxpark, adults only nights at museums and LegoLand, we also wanted these to include building competitions there and give the winners prizes.

Thursday

We were with Wavemaker today learning all about their company and the different aspects of it. Our task for them was to run a campaign for Get London Moving, which is trying to encourage people to use public transport. Our group wanted to aim at young families. We chose this demographic because we believe they would be scared about using public transport again after COVID and may be more health conscious than before. Our campaign was based around giving the different tube lines a story by adding a character for each one and has these characters give the children safety tips and keep them occupied while using the tube.

Friday

We spent the morning with Lauren teaching us all about how to best manage our money. It gave me more information about certain areas I had a basic knowledge about. Having Lauren in was very helpful for giving me an idea of what I’d be dealing with in the future when looking at mortgages and the best way to go about borrowing.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 5

Tuesday

We spent today with Ore Ogungbayi again this time working on our public speaking skills. She talked with us of all the skills she has learnt and how to manage and overcome our nerves when public speaking whether its impromptu or planned. We got into groups and gave impromptu speeches given to us by 1 person and later gave planned speeches to each other. I wrote my speech on the differences between male and female directors asking them to think of all the male directors they can name and comparing that to women. Just on that question it’s insane the difference in opportunity for being a well known director based on your gender and how there have only been 2 female winners for the best director Oscar with only 7 ever being nominated in its 92 year existence. Taking this and considering that every year there’s an average of 5 directors nominated each year means that there are 7 women in the 460 estimated nominations.

Wednesday

The morning we had Dan Keefe, an executive producer, from Coffee & TV talking about his experiences and how he got to where he is now. He gave us a brief that he had been given by retelling the ugly duckling story with the script that they had been given for the piece. Our group picked the work sentimental from the script and worked on the idea of working with stop motion for it as it feels less perfect than animation and live action. We wanted the world be a city like zootropolis and having the mood set being with black and white with Schindler’s List and Sin City giving us he inspiration where there are only certain points of colour.

The afternoon we came back with Lizzie Rivera, who founded Live Frankly talking to us about her company and how she came to creating the company and what it stands for. We were immediately thrown in to writing what sustainability means to us, if we think about it, how sustainable we are and where the responsibility of sustainability lies? This was a very important thing for me because I try to live sustainably in my life to the point that I turned vegetarian at 12 and have kept that up for the past 10 years. I like to think that my sustainability does some kind of difference in saving energy, making sure the food we buy is locally produced where we can, recycling everything I can, not using single use plastic and choosing a reusable alternative, using eco-friendly cleaning products and so much more. I do however know that although I am doing what I can for the environment its not only my contributions that matter and bigger corporations and governments need to do more.

Thursday

We were back with Matty Groves today watching each other’s 90-second documentaries. Everyone did so well and went with such different topics. Watching mine back was such a strange experience because I don’t like my own voice and it wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to look like when I planned it. I’m so glad however that it didn’t detract from what everyone else saw. I love making documentaries especially interviewing other people about their lives and their experiences because it’s such a raw and real form of storytelling and can be done in so many different ways. I think documentaries will always be something I love to do and want to take my experiences of making them further. Along with the fact that I can apparently edit although it’s not my favourite thing to do so that’s always a plus.

Friday

We spent the morning with LinkedIn learning how to maximise our profiles. It was an insightful morning because I have had it for years but just wasn’t fully sure how to best use it to my advantage. I know I’ll be updating it more often than the once I had previously when setting it up.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 2

Monday

This was a really fun day for me because photography has been an interest of mine for so many years. I got my first camera when I was 12/13 and always loved taking pictures of the world. I worked my way up to DSLR cameras very quickly because I realised how much more I could do with photography. From this I actually worked as a nightclub photographer for 3 and a half years along with some freelancing and taking pictures of society events when I was at university. It got to a point where going out and taking photos wasn’t a priority because it seemed like all my effort needed to go into finding a job and not taking part in my hobbies anymore and this session with Richard Pascoe reminded me how much I loved taking photos and just messing around with a camera.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we had a session with Suchandrika Chakrabarti about the art of podcasting. If I’m being honest before this session I wasn’t overly excited about it mainly because I hate the sound of my voice and having other people listen feels just as bad. It was actually a lot of fun asking each other questions and then editing them with audacity, I think the editing seemed more simple because it was similar to a lot of video editing softwares in the way that they run. Thinking about starting a podcast before this session would’ve had me vigorously shaking my head and saying I have no clue how to even start but after I would actually consider it if there was a topic that I would be able to sink my teeth into. I also came away with such a long list of podcast suggestions that I don’t think I’m going to have time for anything else.

Wednesday

In the morning we were with Habiba Katsha who talked us through starting a blog and how to write articles ourselves along with how to pitch those to editors. This was such a good session because we were able to group with each other and come up with a topic to pitch to Habiba that we thought could be a subject for an article. She suggested that starting small is the best way because you want the quality of writing not the quantity for the sake of making a particular word count.

The afternoon we were back with Christ Forrester with the part 2 to his confidence building talk. Both sessions with Chris have given me the ability to look back at myself and see the ways that I can change for the better. Sometimes it seems so simple saying that you should be positive and turning any negatives into positives but actually putting that thought into practice is the hardest thing. In the past couple of years I have tried to be a positive person and there are occasions where the negatives come out but reworking and reframing your mind about the situation can help immensely.

Thursday

We started the Vlogstar challenge today and I was freaked. I stay away from being on camera as much as humanly possible and our first task was to be on camera for 30 seconds with a speech of something we love or hate. I took so many tries to even get the words out right because I’m not the best at speaking off the cuff and need to get my head around the words first. The second part of this session was going through the actual Vlogstar challenge to make a minute video to one of the themes set out either presenting straight to camera for a minute or filming an object and doing a voiceover. We watched some of the previous vlogs and they were amazing particularly He’s Not Like That and Spectrum.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 9

Going into the final week of master classes seems so weird; it feels like we were only doing Film and TV last week where did all the time go.

Tuesday

We spent the day with Merkle learning about their process with media planning and advertising in how they tailor it with each company they work with. The afternoon we spent planning a launch for a new iPhone and figuring out the best ways to target three different audiences. This was so that we would look across the whole media landscape in promoting the same products in different ways to maximise the sales of the products.

Wednesday

We spent the morning with Ceri doing desk yoga. It was a relaxing morning because of its similarities with meditation and using breathing techniques to centre yourself. Being given a guided yoga session while at home was great and something that I can carry forward whenever I need to and be added with my meditation sessions. It was a good morning because you are able to relax your body and mind through it and it helped energise and set me up for the day.

The afternoon we spent with Create Jobs, which gives skill sharing sessions, events and jobs and opportunities for young people looking into the media industry. This is something I will be looking into as a way to learn from people in the industry.

The final session of the day was graduation prep and updating everyone at where we’re at with the planning.

Thursday

We spent the morning with Joanna from Google for an I Am Remarkable session. It was so eye-opening hearing her say that most of the time women are less likely to apply for a job if they don’t meet all their criteria because it’s something I know I do. There’s always a part of me that believes that if I don’t have all the skills needed it would be a waste to apply and I need to change this belief. Having that session with Joanna was so useful and making sure that I remember and look at the things I am good at and the skills I do have to push that.

The afternoon felt packed with lots of different areas of Amazon coming to speak to us about advertising through their platforms. We looked at a brief for promoting the PS5 and trying to raise awareness and increase sales for them. Our group didn’t have much experience with either Twitch or PS5s but it was fun to talk about ways they could advertise to encourage us to look into it. We ended the session with a panel from various people working at Amazon and hearing their career paths to get into different areas.

Friday

We’re back with Sphere this morning looking at work readiness and preparing us for what life will be like once we have jobs within the creative industry. This was a great session back with Sam, although short was so helpful with such good information about how to deal with our first days and what to do and what not to do.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Part 8

Monday

We spent the morning with Laura from Studio BLUP telling us all about how they run their campaigns from the initial briefs to the final designs. We worked on mood boards for the Olympics and tried to match their aesthetic and how they create their campaigns. We ended the session with her talking through a new brief they have for Tottenham in order to connect with a younger audience.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Edelman Take Over

We spent the first day learning about Edelman as a company and then looking into the PR, Brand Activation and Digital of the company. I learnt a lot about them and the company is something I would like to look into more after. We got a brief to promote Starbucks new summer versions of their iced coffee’s, teavana range and Frappuccino’s. Our team went with the idea around buy local week and creating Starbucks Summer Shacks made from recycled scraps and decorated by local artists. The shacks will use the Starbucks brand but containing drinks made by local coffee shops. We wanted to use it to help these companies recover after the pandemic. Through the week they can collect Starbucks points from these local shops and eventually come back to Starbucks to use them.

For the second day we talked through both the data and insights side of the company along with the planning and strategy. It was very interesting learning about how they decide on their marketing strategies with the help of previous advertising and knowing how the companies they’re working with need to advertise to their customers. The second half of the session we spent making a research plan for Starbucks summer drinks and how we can find out what their customers like.

Thursday

So interesting day, I didn’t actually have my coaching session with SmartWorks so that’s been rearranged and I’ll talk about it another time. I had my styling session with Elaine which was quite fun.

I’ve had my coaching session with Jenny and it was so useful just being able to sit with her for an hour and get tips from her about how to maximise my interviews. It was such a good experience learning from someone who working in TV and being able to ask tailored questions about the industry.

Friday

Today was a panel with Creativity Works alumni and it was so encouraging hearing how they went into the programme to where they are now in their careers. They gave so much helpful advice with how to move forward from the programme that I’ll be taking with me.