my luck

As I write this blog, the thought in the back of my mind is; 'my blogs are floating in limbo at the moment'.  Basically, that means I'm a clumsy idiot.  To all of you who didn't see my rant on facebook, I lost my phone a few weeks back, which happened to have pages upon page of blogs written every other day about my time working at Continental Drifts.  Thus it has taken me this long to accept it, and I have to fulfil my duty and let the world know about my thought processes, if I can remember them.  Luckily my very clever 'supervisor', if that be the correct word, had me write up everything I had enjoyed, disliked, learnt and wanted to learn at the end of each week.  Therefore, I am saved, slightly.

Previous work experience blogs and a few following this one will most likely be highly tedious for those who aren't my university tutors.  If you like to read unstructured, sarcastic, tangent filled pieces of reflective writing, then these blogs will be right up your street.

I'll set you up with a fun fact: Continental Drifts are a great company, read upcoming blogs to find out more.

Work Experience at Maverick Television

After receiving an email from Maverick Television informing me that I can join their team for a two week placement, I was very excited. I was informed that I was working on MTV's My Super Sweet, a new series derived from the previous My Super Sweet 16, a reality television show where rich teens (their dads) allow MTV to film their extravagant 16th birthday parties, and the weeks leading up to it. After watching the show, and knowing what it was about, I was eager to work. But after my experience in that line of production, I know that this may not be the direction I wish to go down when finding the perfect career.
Actually, on reflection, I don't know what to make of my time at Maverick TV, it definitely opened my eyes to the soul destroying, office bound reality that is production. Perhaps it was because I was completely naive to what I believed was production.  I thought I was going to be walking around a set and work behind the scenes of television shows they produce.  Not at all.

The first day consisted of a tour around the office, meeting people and learning their names, only to forget them once I shook another hand or wave with a quirky smile on my face. I got sat at my desk, with no neighbours left, right or ahead. Therefore, I felt alone.  If I was lucky enough to fulfil a 'running' job I was ecstatic, otherwise I was glued to my desk, cold calling, which I learnt was just part of the process of production.  

I was, more often than not, cold emailing, but once three days of this had gone by I was near to the brink of suicide. I soon moved onto 'logging' some of the footage pre-recorded for the show which I was happy to do all day long.  Logging information of the footage was the kind of thing I was expecting when I applied for the placement.

As I went into the second week I decided to have a brighter outlook on the job.  I knew it would be weak to quit and in the long run, worth it.  By carrying it through I managed to befriend colleagues and broaden my networks.  Everyone that I had spoken to were freelancers, which seems to be the common field in the production industry, a thought that worries me.

By having such a short placement of two weeks I'm sure I didn't the best out of the job, but I do have an insight.  worth it.

We decorated the trucks

Well, last we week we finally thought we knew where we were going for our piece in the FUSE festival, working with Periplum in the 1000 revolutions a minute project. We knew we had to decorate the trucks in any way we wanted as long as it had the theme of 'Top Secret'. This could include anything we wanted; Mafia basement, warehouse, columbian drug den ect ect what was also said was a '12 Monkeys' kind of scene. We believed this would be best seen as my dad could print us alot of plans and drawings ect to represent that. So I asked father dearest and he infact obliged delivering £230 worth of prints. We were very pleased. Now all we needed was some newspaper cut outs and scribble red pen all over pictures of mugshots, arial views, maps, cctv footage and other such pictures to create a wall full of links and traces for some kind of top secret plan.

We stuck up the the prints of buildings with blutac. Very difficult because the air inside blows it out, makes it very messy and corners keep peeling off. Annoying! We went ahead and made it look rather MI5 ish and it looked pretty good. But earlier in the day they showed us the act that would be going in there instead of, what should have been, the band and it did not fit at all with what we had planned.

The back of the van has like a shelf area, which is the DJ booth, which we have to decorate by tomorrow evening with what? A disco ball? Lights? Maybe use a car battery?

Disco ball and lights lit by AA's it is.