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