Freelancing

On 5th December, we had a guest lecturer - Tom Hooker, founder of BlueGrad, a photography and video business which is very professional.

This is not the Tom Hooker to whom I am referring but it's a very professionally-taken photograph

Tom is an experienced lighting director who was able to tell us a lot about the freelance life. The thought of a freelance life is sometimes quite terrifying - it is not stable and requires you to do more work out of your own time. However, he could relate to us and we saw that the freelance life is a very viable option to take as a career path. He has worked a lot in wildlife and was able to give us many stories on the matter. It showed me that you can pick up experience anywhere and that your career path may surprise you.

Professional logo for Tom Hooker's company. Try as I might,  I could not find an unprofessional one, which I think says a lot about him

Tom Hooker's lecture was perhaps the best way to wrap up this series of lectures. He summed up the importance of professionalism and what it's like to work in the creative industries. A lot of people say negative things about working in TV and while they can be true to an extent, he showed us that it can be interesting and rather rewarding. He gave me the confidence and wisdom to follow my dreams of becoming a freelance videographer who occasionally works with wildlife and has his own company which is why I'm officially announcing the launch of my own company, RedFrad, a Video and Photography business, which I'm sure will be extremely professional.

Copyright

On 29th November, we had a lecture on contracts, copyright and music. Again, this is a subject mostly focused on producers and involving finance, which isn't something that generally interests me. However, I appreciated the value in it as something that would help me sell my ideas, assure that I don't get sued and make sure that my work is always protected. So, as much as I would prefer to stay solely creative, this is relevant to me and my professional development, which is extremely, undeniably, unfathomably important.
Copyright is "the monopoly right of a creator to control the future of copying and exploitation of his/her work it's dissemination in public". All rights rest with the creator at the time of creation. This means you need to be extremely careful when using other people's work - even referencing it can be slightly complicated. But why is it so complicated?
It's because copyright in the UK is vested automatically in creative worlds at the moment of authorship/creation but often the rights are licensed away. It also has to do with the fact that some things  cannot be copyrighted - ideas, your image, the way you dress, genetic code, buildings or works of art that can be seen from a public space. However, there are ways round this; for example, you cannot copyright a building but you could copyright the blueprints. It's important to know these little loopholes so you can protect your own work.

There is also the issue of formats. For this, it is best to visit ifla.tv - The International Format Association, which begs the question - what is a format? Due to ambiguity of this, it is not possible to copyright a format. There is, however the Law of Copyright and the Law of Passing Off, which can help you get round it.

Selling Yourself, Selling Ideas

On 15th November I was given a lecture on how to sell my ideas and myself in a professional way. This gave a lot of context to the work I'm currently doing and allowed my to view it in a new way - not just as "art" or "experience" but as something that can be sold as the basis for a business. The lecture was focusing on producing, which is not something I am usually interested in but found to be a fascinating and in-depth subject nonetheless. The main things we were looking at were:

• Selling culture
• Being a producer
• How to make money out of ideas
• The new and old ways of doing this
• Tips for selling yourself as well as ideas

This all brings to light the lines between "art" and "business". F.R. Leavis explores this in "The Popular Cultures Seldes 'The Great Audience'", and asks one rather difficult question: Has the rise of corporate/monetized media strangled aesthetic experimentation?
I, in defence of aesthetic experimentation and art, would hope that the answer is no, and for the most part, I believe it is. There is constantly change and new ways of doing things in television and all of this comes from experimentation. For example, HD TV would never have come about if some people, at some point, didn't have the money to experiment in new formats. Clearly, despite their reputations for being money-grabbers who care nothing about the aesthetics of art, companies are quite willing to invest in new forms and technologies. Another great example is the 3D revolution of the past few years (which is debatably slowing down now) - industries were quite willing to invest and sell it as a new technology and aesthetic of film.

This all brings to light a few more questions. For example, what is creativity? It's easy to use this word without really discussing what it means. And what does this mean for a producer? There have been significant technological changes in the last few years, how does this affect a producer role?

Finally, the lecture focused on myself as an individual - a company may not be interested in my ideas but myself and my skills. I am young and born into the technological age, I am much more integrated into new media and I can use it to my advantage better than my older superiors can - even those who have tried to stay up-to-date. I am "full of potential" and this gives me an edge in this technological world.

Compliance and Regulation

On 18th October I was given a lecture on the intricacies of Compliance and Regulation. It is a rather in-depth subject and it is difficult to consider every angle. It deals with what determines whether a programme can be broadcast or not and what precautions are put in place so assure sensitive issues are dealt with properly. The details of these issues and guidelines are decided by Ofcom, which describes itself as the "Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries". They are essentially the governing body for all broadcast material. The BBC also have their own guidelines but do not govern or make rulings on transmissions.

Issues

Trying to ascertain the issues that can be broadcast proves to be a tricky task. There are always more than you expect. Following is an attempt at a list of issues I have accumulated, which are often a matter of debate in programming:

• Racism
• Sexism
• Fakery
• Slander/libel
• Ageism
• Health and Safety
• Invasion of Privacy
• Censorship (watershed)
• Phone lines and competitions
• Child protection
• Consent
• Political bias/impartiality
• Sensationalism
• Advertising/commercial reference (guidelines on this differ from channel to channel)
• Secularism
• Offensive language
• Nudity/sexual imagery
• Harm and offence
• Hypnotism
• Crime
• Fairness

While this list may seem comprehensive, there could easily be several additions. If you consider the delicacy with which each subject must be dealt and how many intricacies there are in regulating them, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult to write about each issue in detail.

Ofcom does a fantastic job of deciding what these issues are and how to define them. They were set up under the Communications Act of 2003 and are accountable to parliament. The Act stated that Ofcom's general duties should be to "further the interests of citizens and consumers".

One of the biggest controversies which Ofcom has had to deal with was "Queensgate" in 2007, where footage of a behind-the-scenes film about the monarchy was cut in the trailer in a way that suggested the Queen had stormed out of a photoshoot. As a result, the BBC1 controller, Peter Fincham resigned.

To  help myself understand the intricacies of the subject and to test what I already know, I have decided to take the BBC Safeguarding Trust Interactive quiz, which was created after the Queensgate controversy to assure nothing like that happened again. I got almost every question right and learnt a lot about how difficult it is deal with different situations which deal with these issues.

On John Dale and Bharat Nalluri

Introduction to the blog

My name is Nikhil Chavda. I'm currently studying Television Production at Bournemouth University. I'm in my second year and for my first term, I have 5 big lectures on Professionalism. I have to write a blog post on each one. The lectures are:

Wednesday 3rd October - Intensive Day
Thursday 18th October - The Freelance life; How to make it pay
Thursday 15th November - Being a Producer ; How to develop and sell ideas
Thursday 6th December - Regulation and Compliance for Broadcasters; Contracts, copyright and music
Thursday 13th December - Beyond Broadcast; The wider world of media jobs

The aim of these lectures is to help me understand how to become more professional in a workplace and how to find work once I leave university. They should go hand-in-hand with my production and theory work in other areas of the course to help me apply the knowledge I learn to the real world.

I'm hoping this blog will help me keep track of the lectures and the work I'm doing as well as allow me to gain a deeper insight into it so I can criticize it and build upon it.

Bharat Nalluri

Today (3/10/12) we had a guest speaker in - Bharat Nalluri, director of Spooks, Life On Mars, Hustle and Outcasts. Rarely do we have such a fascinating and engaging lecture and ever rarer, do we have a fascinating and engaging guest speaker. Learning about his professional journey was somewhat inspiring; I do not fully know what I want to do after university but listening to him made me want to jump straight into the world of freelance filmmaking. The course I'm taking part in is great, but it's not often that we get to feel that.

The most intriguing parts of his lecture, however, was when he was talking about his lack of professionalism. He's made quite a name for himself but he has often acted unprofessional or done unconventional things (particularly in his early years) in order to get his films made. I imagine this isn't the sort of message our lecturers wanted us take from him and of course, it doesn't mean that I'll be acting unprofessional in my work. But it has showed me that sometimes, no matter what you do, you need to forget about your rigid structure of doing things, your professionalism, your conventions and just do what you do best; in my case, that's filmmaking. Today I learnt that following the grain doesn't always get you where you want to go and at times like that, it's up to you to make your own path.

This is Bharat Nalluri. He is probably looking at something professional.

John Dale

Despite the lectures being focused on professionalism, the guest speakers we had started off talking about the times they were not professional. John Dale was particularly interesting because he made a lot of mistakes in his early years. He wasn't professional but through a lot of hard work and a bit of luck, he was able to get back on track. It was a valuable lesson on the importance of professionalism and these lectures.

He also brought up some interesting points about the online revolution and it's effects on the way we tell and experience stories and how we interact with our audience(s).

He noted the following changes:

Passive viewers -> Active viewersCommitted viewing -> Glimpse and mood viewingPush Storytellers -> Interactive facilitatorsTech overload to -> Apps underwhelmBulk channels platform -> Community of interestHierarchal funding -> Chaotic cross platform

These changes are intrinsic to understanding the distorting landscape of media production and story telling.
John also gave us some fantastic advice for helping us through the industry we're going to enter after university:

• Be driven by curiosity and instinct
• Ignore labels, status' and "career paths"
• Think "user" not "commissioner"
• Storytelling exists inside tough businesses
• New directions enrich old skills
• Always, always surprise yourself

This is a fantastic image of John Dale which i have acquired through the use of professional search engine functionalities