Second week done and Dusted.

So this week has been really exciting and frankly a little exhausting. Monday to Wednesday was spent down in London in the Channel 4's francis house offices. Where we had some fantastic and inspirational talks

Day 1 Included talks from:

• Louise Brown, Head of Cross Platforms
• Chris Braithwaite, Agency Sales
• John Williams, Deputy Scheduler

Day 2:

• Fergus Campbell, Head of Magazines and Events
• Alistair Pegg, Editor, Factual Entertainment
• Rob Ramsey, Deputy Head, Sponsorship
• Vicky Taylor, Commissioning Editor, News, New Media
• Diana Izzard, Lawyer, Legal and Compliance
• Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education

Day 3:

• Kate Teckman, Editor, Features
• James Guerrier, Senior Research Executive
  Joanne Jones, Audience and Insight
• Rosalind Godber, Marketing Executive, Factual and Features programmes, and More4
  Jamie Dodds, Marketing Assistants on Skins
• Ed Webster, Creative Development Producer

Got a few good snaps as well while I was down there including the cool channel 4 art sculpture infront of the horseferry road offices. Que Awesome London snaps.

Ang Infront of the channel 4 logo sculpture

The C4 Logo at a distance (its made of unbrellas btw.)

Ang at 124 Horseferry Road (Home of Channel4)

Ain't this little pub sweet? its totally dwarfed by the big bad black skyscrapers :P

Westminster Abbey

Check out this sexy old school car we saw infront of the abbey.

The abbey from the side (gorgeous architecture!)

Good old big ben (and the London eye in the background)

Sorry there aren't more, we didnt get out to see much of London since we were so busy with all the speakers and such.

On Thursday having arriving back from London we were treated to an excellent training and coaching session with channel4's Alison George. She gave us some really useful tips for coming up with creative ideas as well as helpful advice on presenting yourself. She also did a couple of coaching excercises with us to help us to determine our goals and the steps we needed to make to achieve them :)

Friday was a quiet day at our hotdesks (which was a bit of a relief) ...well apart from getting our mug shots taken. :p (More of that to come)

Next week is shaping up to be exciting as well, on monday we have another speaker coming into TRC and then Tuesday to friday we are all of on our first set of placements. With Angela of to Axis Animations and me to Blonde media.

More to come peeps

Wish us luck :)

First week done, first blog due!

Gen Up has been a complete dream so far! Intense, enjoyable, and exciting! The TRC team have made every effort to make us all feel very welcome and comfortable and it’s a great environment to work with.
The Gen Up placement consists of a team of six including myself and Searra, and I’m really happy with who we’re working with; a creative bunch who are all out-spoken and different and I’ve learnt all sorts of things from them, whether it be big things or small.
Anyway, the first day was a general induction; getting introduced to everyone in the office and also given a further insight into what TRC Media are about, what the Gen Up placement is about, and how and why we were selected to be in the final six.
On the second day, we were each asked to deliver a short presentation on our work, our inspirations, and our aspirations. As we only had limited time, I chose to present the work I’d produced for my honours project as talking about it enabled me to talk about my inspiration, practice, and an element of my aspirations.
Thankfully everyone seemed to receive it really well, apart from it seemed one of the girls on the team, who thought it was “too Disney”, which I took as a huge compliment as I ADORE Disney. I actually did quite a bit of research into the relationship between music and animation specifically from Disney’s “Golden Era”, and as our tutor’s at University were constantly banging on about how our practical honours project was to be evidently strongly informed by our research, this made me feel greatly satisfied!
Following this, I received some great positive input, so much so, that I’m looking forward to developing my idea, story, and character further.
The other five guys on the team also gave short presentations on their work and it was really enjoyable to see everyone’s different styles, interests, and abilities. I’m glad we are all so very different as I believe it’s going to be very fun, interesting, and rewarding with a unique outcome and refreshing experience from working with one another.
The week also consisted in a number of guest speakers from Scottish Screen, Cask Productions, 4iP, Channel 4 nations & regions, and CBBC.
We had a one off day in BBC Scotland (where we’ll be returning to later on in the placement) and had the most fascinating class with Paul Myers (BBC research specialist) who gave us an intensely enlightening look into researching on the internet…..something I would have appreciated even more if I’d learnt this before I’d started carrying out research for my honours project last year!

So what is Gen Up anyway?

Wassat? whats Gen Up you say? well... that's an excellent question, which this blog will aim to explain, as me and Angela take part in the programme.

But first I'll give you a quick insight.

As quoted by the lovely people at TRC media -
"Gen Up is TRC’s brilliant new initiative for young digital creatives.
It’s an intensive seven-week training programme that includes placements at Channel 4, BBC Scotland, an ad agency, a digital media company, and an independent television production company. Places will be highly competitive and will be awarded to recent graduates (or those new to the industry) with a real talent for creating digital content. "

We start a week on Tuesday so keep your eyes peeled for all sorts of interesting bits and bobs that'll be getting posted very soon.

Peace Out Peeps
Sea x