Work Experience Week – Amy Connacher

Day 1

On the first day me and Pat were in charge of researching the newest bands in Brighton for a new programme. After lunch me, Jason and Pat went out to ask local businesses to see if they wanted to be filmed for an interview for their opinions on the England playing in the euros. I was then taught about sound and how to use the control board for it, after this Tim put me in charge of the sound for the live news, this job came with a lot of pressure but it was a great experience.

Day 2

The second I arrived at the studio I was greeted by Erik and quickly taken to the locations to film for the show Nelda’s View. The first house was an £800,000 house opposite Withdean Leisure Centre. For the program an estate agent toured Nelda around a property on the market and helps the audience to get a better understanding of the property if they were potentially thinking of buying a new place. The second place was a £400,000 one bedroom flat in Hove. When we got back to the studio Tim put me in charge of the sound for the live news again, I had improved on my knowledge of it and went one step up by setting up the guests with microphones and then making sure all the sound levels were right during the interviews.

Day 3

Today I got a taste of journalism as I was assisting Holly Keogh on two stories she was reporting on. They were stories about the West Pier selling its scraps and a Vicar raising money for her 200 mile cycle. For the second story we picked up the wrong camera and left with no SD card however Holly kept calm and quickly decided to film it on our phones instead, this made the experience even more real as it showed not everything will go according to plan. When we got back we then edited the video in the amount of time we had left and uploaded it to the BBC database.

Day 4

Today consisted of more on location filming with Holly, this time there was a story about a health and safety awareness event held at Sussex Cricket Grounds for year 6’s and The Best of Health which was a similar event for people with learning disabilities, this was a great day and gave me the chance to experience what kind of opportunities you get to go to, for example we even met the mayor at the cricket grounds! After we got back we had to edit the package, write a script and once again uploaded it to the BBC

Day 5

On our final day all 4 of us got a chance to record some Vox Pops independently, we set up the equipment and chose the location then asked the public to get their opinions about the EU referendum result and editing these together for the news on the same day. We had been set the task at 12 and given the deadline of having everything filmed by 1 and then edited and shared by 2. The video was then put onto the news!

Overall, the week was a great experience and gave us a great insight into how the company works and what kind of environment a career in media/journalism is like. I had a great time and feel proud to have contributed to the company, whether this was behind the scenes or with our own content!