PSHE Videos Never Looked This Good When I Was at School

At the beginning of the year I did a two week work experience placement at Red Production Company. I was helping out with a variety of different programmes that were in production at the time, mainly doing office based work but I also managed to get on set for a day. They were producing a series of short films for BBC Learning entitled Life Stories to highlight a variety of relationship and friendship issues which will be shown in schools as part of PSHE lessons and I was helping out as a floor runner.

My job on the day was to make sure all the children, chaperones and crew were happy and to ensure the cast were at the right place at the right time (make up/wardrobe/set etc). It was also my job to queue the children onto the set at the right time and generally help out with whatever needed doing. It was really great to be working on children's based content again and all the kids were absolutely fantastic and the crew were bloomin lovely. I was also highly impressed with the fact they had a catering van on location, which when you've been working on low budget indie films, you tend to get very excited about things like that and believe it to be the highest form of luxury. Not only did the catering van provide hot lunches and snacks throughout the day but when I arrived at 7am on the Saturday that we were filming, I was informed that breakfast was also included, a pick n mix hot breakfast butty with all the trimmings to be precise...heaven!

Anyway here is the finished video, it's a lovely little story about two school friends and it's a great feeling to watch it back and know that I played a part in creating it.



To watch the other videos in the Life Stories series visit the BBC Learning Zone website.

Scan Girl's Proudest Moment

Love Life starts tonight, Thursday 15th March, 9pm on ITV1

For almost two years of my life I was temping for a company where my entire day consisted of scanning an endless amount of paperwork and saving it onto the company's network drive. It was a rather pitiful existance at the time and the only variety in my day was hanging out in the smoking hut, eating lunch and a whole hour of bliss where I sat on reception and flirted outrageously with contractors. I soon developed the nick name of Scan Girl, the lamest super hero the world has ever seen but one who will smoothly and efficiently rid your office of excess crap. I was the fastest scanner in the west, so much so that I developed a most ingenious way of pulling out staples really fast by spreading a huge pile of paperwork out like a fan and then wizzing over it with the staple muncher. It was so effective that I gave myself repetitive strain injury as a result which was highly ammusing to the rest of the team but then they all got quite jealous when I ended up with a beautiful technicoloured electronic stapler and ergonomic staple remover after making a stand for my rights.
I worked there for a year then they got rid of all their temps including me and then they begged me to come back to them nine months later because nobody else was prepared to do the scanning in my absence. I then stayed on there for another eight months until the next round of redundancies happened. After that I decided to stop wasting my life away in Chester and move to Salford to be more proactive with infiltrating the television industry. I admit that another big reason for me moving was so that this company (lovely as all the people in my department were) couldn't come crawling back to me for a third time. I had nightmares of being in that role for years and years and then one day realising that I had scanned my soul away.
I moved to Salford in November so that I could better my chances at making a successful career for myself in the television industry. Outside of London, Greater Manchester is the place to be. With the BBC moving a load of departments up here this has attracted other broadcasting companies into the city and strengthened the ones that were already based here. Besides which, the people are friendlier, renting a flat is a lot cheaper and you  can actually use your mobile phone on all public transportation systems.

At the start of the year I was offered a couple of weeks work experience with Red Production Company. They are a very highly renowned independent production company and make some amazing television dramas. During my time there, I was asked if I could scan a copy of all the actor agreements (along with some other bits and pieces) for a drama called Love Life which was in its last stages of post production at the time. I found it quite ironic that I had moved to pastures new only to be faced with the thing I was running away from. However just to put it into some sort of perspective, this scanning took half a day rather than 20 months.

I soon discovered that Love Life had some very exciting cast members, Alexander Armstrong and Rob James-Collier (aka Thomas, "the bastard" footman from Downton Abbey) to name but a few. I discovered that scanning in moderation and in the right environment can be quite pleasant and exciting...also it helps if you are as easily amused as I am. I went home that night, switched on Pointless and got quite excited knowing that I had been working for a drama that contained an actor that was there on the telly right in front of my eyes.

Love Life starts tonight, Thursday 15th March at 9pm on ITV1 and I promise you that it will be amazing. It's a three part drama and you can always record Glee and watch that later. I know my part in it wasn't even really a part at all but I will still be watching and getting highly excited thinking to myself that I contributed at least four hours of my life to the programme but hey, this is the industry that I love and even the menial tasks that under any other conditions I would consider gouging my eyes out as a better alternative can give me the greatest satisfaction. As Mary Poppins famously once said, in every job that must be done there is an element of fun...luckily for me I find the fun in practically everything I do within this industry because it's all awesome.