channel 4 day

After a very early start on yesterday afternoon, the day started off with registration and a free goodie bag. Glynn and Carol are the head of 4talent but Glynn did the most of the talking. He went through what channel four is about, how they work etc. It was very good information to know. He then went on to talk about all the different jobs which you can do in channel 4. He told us about more of the "office based" jobs and how that was a good place to start to get into the industry and to work yourself up. 

  We then had a talk from Colin Macdonald who has got the first games related job for channel 4. He is the commissioning editor games. He is originally from Dundee and talked about how he got to where he is now. The best information that I took away from Colin was that while he was at university he spent all his free time travelling up and down the country for events, shows etc while all his friends played games and got drunk. It shows that you shouldnt just do the bare minimum but if you really want something you have to sacrifice a lot of your time not just 9-5

   After the talks we then went on to the first part of the workshop. I was very disappointed by this point. I was in the green screening workshop and the task was basically to do the very very very basic stage of green screen. So for the first half we went round getting footage and filming on the green screen. I felt a bit let down at this part, and all of the people that I spoke to felt the same. There is a million tutorials on how to green screen so if you really wanted to learn the basics its so easy to do so. The cameras that we used were so ridiculously old, they did that job yes but the library really needs some new cameras.

 So after the free lunch (best part of the whole day) we had the second half of the work shop. Seeing as there was only one guy to look after/ help 26 odd people and only an hour to finish the task it was basically impossible. Out of the whole class only 3 videos actually got completed as just about everyone else could even get the footage off the camera on to the computer and when they did they had no idea what to do with it. The only reason Catriona and I got the video finished was because we already knew exactly what to do and had to work really fast. They showed our work at the end to everyone and to be honest it was a bit embarrassing, yes its really good for an hours work but it doesn't really showcase us as artists very well.

   So the end of the day was Glynn talking more about how to focus on the industry. Then the last talk was from Paul Farley who is the CEO of Tag Games, It was very interesting hearing about how he got to where he is now.

To summarize:

The day was mostly a waste of time, I was really looking forward to getting to talk to people and learning new things and it wasnt as great as made out to be.What really annoys me is that because I study at abertay and the event was at abertay, the two guest speakers were about games!!! Wheres people to talk about advertisements, their branding, marketing, things that they also do?! Sadly there was none of that and the guy who took the green screen workshop doesnt actually work for channel four as I tried to ask him about his personal experience= didnt get very far. 

There was more film crew/presenters than actually people than people working in our fields at channel 4. We were herded around like sheep, lost both our breaks and our lunch was cut short because of people talking too long. We were constantly told to be quite so they could film, a camera was being flashed in your face all during the workshop so it was hard to concentrate. This day probably shouldnt have been a day but maybe 2 days so you could have had longer in the workshop. What would have been better in the workshop is that the person running it, showed his work, how he learned, how he got to where he is now, his style, etc and that would have been more worth while.

Here is a picture of one of the talk and the video that Catriona and myself created in the workshop