Pendeford AS Media – What makes a good media employee?

Yesterday I visited Pendeford High School in Wolverhampton to deliver a presentation to the lovely AS students. This was partly inspired by the ever-cheerful and proactive Nicky Ball at Screen Yorkshire who gave her time so generously when she described how she made students aware of what it’s really like working in the media.
She set me off thinking what I would describe as essential skills and I surprised myself when I realised how low down the list skills and knowledge were. The vital skills on my list were all personal, social and transferable skills.
It’s possible I just take knowledge and technical skills for granted as everyone I’ve ever worked with has them in spades. But what differentiates the ones I want to work with and the ones I consider great, from the ones I don’t, is the following:

Be fearless
Work well in a team of strangers
Be flexible
Be open to new experiences
Ask questions
Be a radiator not a drain
Take responsibility for your actions

What makes a bad colleague?

Not getting your hands dirty
Offending others unnecessarily
Being passive aggressive
Being passive
Being aggressive
Not being straight/honest/clear
Being lazy
Being unable to get what you want

They’re probably just general life skills for anyone, but they seem to me to make the difference between the successful production team and the unsuccessful.

Ross, Brand and Editorial Guidelines in Broadcasting

After all the BBC’s efforts , the On Air Talent still sometimes fails to understand that all broadcasters have to comply with Editorial Standards. The bridge from creative to offensive can be quite small, because sticking to the rules is what creative people don’t do. That’s why they have layers of staff – editors, producers, series producers and executive producers –  to make sure their creativity doesn’t get the broadcaster slapped by the regulator. And in the last few years, the requirement to fill in in an online compliance form as dictated by Ofcom. So there wasn’t much excuse for this. Except that clearly someone, somewhere in that chain, didn’t realise they were there not just to foster creativity, but also to keep the talent out of trouble. 

After Queengate, new EdPol training was forced on all BBC staff and all independent production companies working for the BBC. 

Almost all production staff go into the job to be creative.  A few of them don’t quite see the importance of EdPol. It’s not what you go into the business to do. But as this week’s row and sad result shows, it’s vital to regard it as a key part of your role if you have any editorial function at all.

OMM Media Hysteria

So 2,000 hardy and experienced fell runners toook part in the OMM. The weather was so bad it was feared that many of them were stranded overnight on the hill. For the national news reporters the most fearful thing about the whole event was that none of the runners had a mobile phone to call for help.  Every participant survived overnight, despite having no mobile phone, because they were very well prepared for the task they had embarked upon.

The next day, 6 participants were winched off by the MR teams and all the rest got down under their own steam. So far we have no evidence that they couldn’t have got off under their own steam. No participant interviewed has said it was badly organised. But already the news bulletins are proclaiming there are many question marks over whether it will happen again.

Is it possible the journalists have over-reacted, being unused to people who enjoy challenge and are grown up enough to decide on risk for themselves?

Whiteboard video clips issues

I’m making video to be used in classrooms, specifically for the whiteboard. Whiteboards aren’t the same as TV or computer screens. This has good and bad implications for making video clips. The worst factor is how drab a lot of video looks in a lot of classroom situations. This useful technology can be less than compelling in the wrong lighting conditions. What looks marvellous illuminated on a desktop in optimum lighting conditions can be washed out, indistinct or muddy on the big screen, particularly compared to the sharpness and clarity of a flash animation. Over the coming months we will try to solve this problem in shooting new videos for whiteboards. 

 Shooting factors include lighting, film effects, choice of locations, sound, and recording format. We aged old crone movie makers love our arty film lighting but that won’t wash on whiteboards. The director, design team and camera crews will be considering how we can avoid this pitfall, improve the picture quality and avoid any white- or black-outs of the type that can apear in typically artistic scenes. We’ll also see what benefits shooting on HD will bring.

 Classroom factors are outside our control. They include use of projectors, classroom blinds and other ambient light controls, speaker quality and seating arrangements for viewing. We have to assume the video will be seen under the worst classroom conditions.

This is an old problem also. In the past it was poor quality TVs with tinny speakers, 30 kids clustered round a wheel-in telly. No curtains in the classrooom. But in some ways. we’re still there with badly lit and set up whiteboards.

Showcomotion Innovation Labs

At today’s Showcomotion I had the good fortune to attend a session with Frank Boyd and Marc Goodchild. ‘Crossover Kids’ introduced me to their method for sparking off multi-platform developments amongst a random group of interactive and TV producers. Having brainstormed lists of platforms and genres we were randomly allocated two platforms and a genre and sent away to come up with something that worked for kids. I particularly enjoyed Frank’s excellent road map for creativity and ideas generation which led from ‘an opportunity’, via a widening miasma of ’seeking perspective’ then down into a narrowing funnel of ‘editing’, to ‘a thingy’. It was reassuringly low-tech and resulted in free and easy brainstorming.

Don’t Cry For Me….

From one extreme to the other. I spent the 3rd – 11th In Argentina, working with my opposite number there. Amazing and, sadly, a good reminder of my various blessings. By far the worst thing is the skinny, scruffy children, five year olds tugging at the clothes of shoppers on BA’s answer toSouth Kensington. A crazy faced boy with his arm burrowing deep into a lamp-post mounted bin, as he retrieved a half eaten McDonalds. A collection of boys asleep in a broad shop doorway.

It was a far cry from the picture painted in my travel guide, which went on and on about what a crazy, great, hip, swinging, hot, hot, hot place this is. Looking back on it now, the description seems like that of a desperate teenager, hoping to plant a picture of a vacation that would force their friends to envy them, even though the reality was all a bit more sad and embarrasing.

Good things were many as well. A lot of friendly people, good food – with vegetables – means a lot to me when I’m travelling. Great, great wine, not that I got to drink much, beautiful avenues and traffic which, though at first it seemed murderous, was in fact much more decorous than its equivalent here, as 10 lines of cars wait patiently on each side of the massive July 4th Highway for all the pedestrians to cross, only nudging over when it’s safe to do so.

Very passionate TV and film makers. I saw some superb work on children and the media, some of which I would like us to emulate here.

http://www.me.gov.ar/escuelaymedios/

It was a heavy schedule in the end, but fortunately one day was a holiday. On that day, I went, on the advice of my lovely PA, to Colonia, In Uruguay. A bit daft to go all that way to one country and them immediately depart for another, but everything was shut in BA. Queuing up for the 3 hour ferry across the River Plate was long and tedious, and I resolved to get the fast one back. Only time for a nice lunch and a quick English tour of the area, before I was back across the river and into Argentina.

The travelling to and from Argentina was extremely unluxurious. On Standby from Madrid, I eventually got to BA to discover my luggage was in Barcelona. No car to meet me as I’d spent so long fruitlessly trying to claim my luggage, the hotel Plaza San Martin Suites on Suipacha,

http://www.plazasanmartin.com.ar/

refused to let me in till 1pm and it was only 10.30 am when I got there. They suggested I go out on the street for lunch, at 10.30 on a Sunday, having been travelling for 22 hrs, with no currency, no water, no luggage and nothing open. They also refused to let me call collect to my insurance company. Welcome to BA. The service got better after that. It could hardly have been worse. Maybe it was just the collection of press queuing up to interview me in subsequent days that made them all a bit more helpful. Whatever it was, it improved.

In one mad taxi ride I also managed a brief glimpse at La Boca and Casa Rosada, and a more leisurely walk round Recoleta in a downpour, as I visited the grave of Evita. Or Madonna, as I tend to think of her