YR2 – ORGANISING AN EVENT – THE END PRODUCT

After months of preparation, the day of the event was finally here. A lot of hard work had been put into this project, so we were all looking forward to seeing how it would all go. It didn’t get off to a great start, there was far too much waiting around for things to get under way. After Sam had finished warming the speakers up in Loxtons, we were all ready. There were a few minor technical difficulties at first, but soon after we were ready for our first speaker.



Valerie Burke was the first to try to spark interest with the very gormless looking audience. She started with a clip from a program she produced called Challenge America, a spin off from the British series, Challenge Anneka. I think it dragged on just a little, but was quite interesting to see. Her story of how she got into the industry was a big shock to everyone. To hear that she didn’t follow the conventional routes to get her foot in the door, which actually turned out to be a very similar story to all the other speakers.

Cormac MacMahon was up next. At first, I was worried he wasn’t going to get much of a response, seeing as he’s a journalist at Heart radio in Bristol, and as far as I knew, there weren’t many in the audience with an interest in those fields. However, he was actually one of the better ones. His job didn’t really interest me, it was more his personality and humour that got me hooked. You could tell that this wasn’t his first time in front of a large crowd. He was very engaging, and though he was of an older age, he did seem very much in touch with the youth of today.

Of all the speakers, i was most looking forward to hearing from Jason Holmes. he’s just finished producing one of my favourite programmes on TV at the moment, and has a lot of experience in the side of the industry I’m most interested in making a career. Out of all the speakers, he was the one who provoked the most questions from the audience. Although it was good to see the audience showing an interest, I was kind of disappointed. Every speaker had only a short amount of time to answer people’s questions, and there were just too many to get around to answering ones I had. So I was kind of bitter that everyone decided to ask this speaker all their questions, but I wasn’t too down seeing as we were planning of having lunch after as a group, so I could ask him stuff then. But as a first time speaker, he didn’t show any sign of nerves and was very interesting.

The final speaker to take the spotlight was the young independent Producer/Director, Laura Abrahams. This was the first time she had spoke to a large crowd, and you could notice it. She wasn’t at all bad, but was a little nervous. I think she made a big mistake, at the beginning of her talk, by mentioning that she worked on a show where she was required to walk around town and get men to rate her bum. I think all the men in the audience spent the rest of her talk doing exactly that. But she didn’t just have a pleasant derrière to offer, she had a very interesting career to talk about. it was funny hearing how every one of the speakers, of no intention of their own, had been led down a certain path in the industry. Laura had worked on Big Brother then moved out to Australia and got a job working on I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here. She later admitted to us that she cant stand reality TV shows (though they were fun to work on), and that she had fallen into that line of program making.

I think all of our hard work paid off on the day. the speakers were very interesting to talk hear from.The audience were happy, mainly due to the free cookies in the interval. The meal in the cafeteria afterwards was a bit of a let down. Jason and Cormac were unable to stick around, which was a shame because this meant i wasn't going to be able to ask Jason what i wanted too during his talk. Though it was good to hear Laura and Valerie compare careers, and talk about the industry in a more casual environment.