23rd February 2009

Day 1

TWOFOUR



TwoFour Group is divided into five sectors these are:

• BROADCAST
• COMMUICATIONS
• DIGITAL
• HMC INTERACTIVE
• DIGITAL BRIDGE

For my work experience placement I applied to work in the ‘Broadcast’ sector to gain a wider understand and some experience about working in the T.V (broadcast) industry. TwoFour is a very well established production company and have offices in Philadelphia, London and Plymouth. They have produced programmes such as:

• Hotel Inspector (now currently filming the fifth series)
• Noel’s HQ
• Make My Body Younger
• 24 Hours with…
• Kylie Exposed.
• Noel’s Christmas Present
• Are you smarter than a ten year old?

Plus many more!

My work placement was based down in Plymouth, when I first arrived at the office I was greeted by Graham Perkins (works in HR) he went through a list of things I would be doing within my placement, through health and safety regulations and gave me a guided tour of the building explaining which each sector of the company did.




After my introduction Graham introduced me to Tom and Becky, who I was working with for the day. My first task was to do some logging. This required me to listen to the tapes and transcribe word for word what everyone says. To be honest at first this task didn’t seem to bad but towards the end of the day I did feel it was slightly boring. However it was interesting listening to the comments the director and camera operators were making and the way different ways the interviewer tried to encourage the interviewee to give long, detailed self-contained answers. The programmes, which I was logging, were ‘Hotel Inspector’ and ‘Make My Body Younger’.

Tom and Becky were both really friendly and loved to chat which was really nice because it made me feel welcome. This was great because I got to find out about how they got into their current jobs. Both of them were part of the Graduate intake where the company employs a select amount of graduates and gives them a six-month contract as runners. Something I may look into applying for after my third year.
Both Tom and Becky said they loved and enjoyed their jobs and were gaining an enormous amount of experience but the pay was fairly low. In fact one of them had two jobs to be able to earn enough to pay rent and live comfortable and one of them relied on their partner’s income for support. This was quite discouraging too hear because they both were putting in long hours for little pay. However both of them said they really enjoyed it and had lots of opportunities to travel to different places with work; plus in this industry you need to start at the bottom to work your way up the career ladder and the key thing is to network and gain as much experience and skills as possible.

24th February 2009

Day 2.

The following day I did pretty much the same thing – logging tapes for the programme ‘Make My Body Younger’. However it was great being in the downstairs office again because everyone is really friendly and chatty it’s a nice environment to be in.