Today I was lucky enough to attend the 4Talent day I heard about by following their twitter @4Talent. I applied a couple of weeks ago & I kinda forgot about it/when it was as I hadn't heard back from them. I got an email on Friday saying I'd been accepted onto it. I was really excited as you know I really want to get into the media industry so any talks or workshops I can attend I'm there especially if it's in my home town then I definitely need to attend it if I can!
It was an all day event had to get to Hope University bright & early for 9am & it went on till 5pm. When we got there we had to get registered & they gave us a goodie bag!
A bag, water bottle, notebook, notepad, highlighters, 2 pens & a box for business cards. Hopefully I'll get to make the most of the business card box soon...!
We then got to choose from 4 workshops to attend
1. Multi-Platform Journalism in the digital age with Jules McCarthy, BBC, Staffordshire University
2. Creative Factual Production with Trai Anfield BBC & Enlightened Media
3. Scripting for TV Drama with Anita Pandolfo
4. Digital & Cross platform production with (a) Lime Pictures - Hollyoaks and (Mirage Islam)
I chose the 4th one, as at the minute I'm looking for a job doing digital marketing so thought it would be really helpful to get to know about it. We then went into the lecture theatre we had some inspiring talks about how they got into the industry, some advice & tips on how we can, how the day was going to be run.
The workshop I chose was split into 2 groups; morning & afternoon. I was in the afternoon one which meant I got to go to Lime Pictures after lunch. We went to a computer room where we were split into 4 groups & had to come up with a new TV idea & how would market it with digital media. My group came up with a reality TV show based on University Students in Liverpool Uni's. It would be on YouTube attracted be people aged 16+ thinking of going into uni. The students knew they were going to be filmed but they didn't know when so it would be completely natural, we didn't want them to act differently for the cameras. We decided how we were going to market it with the different social networks then we had to pitch our idea to the other 3 groups. Everyone came up with really ideas!
We then had lunch which they provided, sandwiches, pasta, fruit salad, tea, coffee, juice it was really good. We then got in taxis to go to Lime Pictures. We could have easily walked it in like 15 minutes. But it was raining & I didn't have an umbrella so I wasn't complaining about the 2 minute taxi journey down there!
Lime Pictures - Hollyoaks
Lime Pictures is in Childwall where they film Hollyoaks. We went to a portacabin where the digital team spoke to use about their roles. We watched Friday's episode which will also be aired tomorrow night on E4 (that's 1 episode ahead. We then got split into groups to help with their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr & website. I was in the Tumblr group where we had to pick a clip from the that episode to create a gif they can post I think on Friday on their Tumblr http://hollyoaksofficial.tumblr.com/
It was really good to see how they come up with the content to post, unfortunately I didn't get the chance to see all the media platforms as we were put into groups. It was still really interesting & useful non the less.
We then got the shortest taxi ride back to the uni where we had more talks in the lecture theatre with Q&As.
It was a really good & inspiring day, even though I've been to loads of media talks there's always something new that I didn't know about, gets you to think more whilst also making the hunger to strive in the media industry even more! Like it's crazy how much it's changed especially how social media plays such a big part without you even realising because you kind of just take it for granted.
It's been a to a couple of cities already but if goes to a city near you and you're interested in going into the media industry you should definitely apply! You can find out from their twitter @4talent
