Tag Archives: internship

Rectory Gardens Eviction

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Hi, I’m an intern placed by Erasmus at Spectacle. My name is Silke and I’m from Belgium and will be staying here for 3 and a half months.
On my third day of the internship we went filming in Rectory Gardens.
Tony Healy an 81 year old resident of Rectory Gardens housing cooperative of over 30 years was to be evicted out of his home by Lambeth Council.
It was a street with really old houses that had been abondened for a while.
It was not really the choice of the people to leave their houses, the Council threw them out to sell them again.
A really cruel thing to do but there was no other way I guess.

So when we arrived there were a lot of neigbours and a councillor of the green party.
We found out that Tony was not there, everybody was calling hospitals
to find where Tony was.
They informed us that he had been sectioned the night before.
To be sectioned means committing (someone) compulsorily to a psychiatric hospital in accordance with a section of a mental health act.
So they came into his home at night and took him to the mental hospital.
In the process the old man broke his hip.
Not a very nice thing to do..
The man’s house was very beautiful. He was a musician and painted a lot. All the walls in and out his house are covered in art works made by him.
Luckily there were a lot of people blocking the door. We also helped by just being there with the camera’s.
So the bailiffs were afraid to show up with so much attention pointed at them.
The council was also present but they were ignoring us and the cameras.
Spectacle has already filmed in Rectory Gardens a few years ago but we are still editing the imagery.

Spectacle is currently working on a project about Rectory Gardens.
If you want to follow our progress, click on the links below:

Spectacle homepage
Like Spectacle Documentaries on Facebook
Follow SpectacleMedia on Twitter

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An insight into an internship at Spectacle

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I have just completed a month long work experience placement at Spectacle, an award winning independent television production company. Spectacle is a small, friendly company with a positive office atmosphere.

As an intern my tasks include promoting Spectacles training courses in video production through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and the Spectacle blog. Through this I have learnt how to use TweetDeck a useful tool to line up tweets, improved my ability to use WordPress and learned other transferable social media skills. I have also been involved in writing Spectacles monthly newsletter.

As Spectacle is a small organisation there is the opportunity to become involved and receive a greater insight into the company. For example I have had the opportunity to be on the film set of one of Spectacles current projects.  I do not have any past experience in the film making industry so this was interesting and valuable.

Another benefit of working for a small company meant that my ideas and opinions were valued and my actions made more of an impact.

I am currently a student at Bournemouth University studying Communication and Media and needed to complete a four week summer placement as part of my course. I came across Spectacle on my university careers website, which can be used by both current students, graduates and members of the public looking to further their career.

To find out more about Spectacle’s work experience placement opportunities.

 

Looking for studio for 13 people. Click here to reply to this ad

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Para leer este blog en español pincha aquí.

When you are working on an audiovisual project there are a lot of overlapping issues, interdependent decisions to take, and this makes things difficult. While we are looking for actors, we are also looking for a studio to shoot the video. This is not easy. We have to remember we will need a green background, for the chroma keys, or an infinity cove, to get that white non-discernable atmosphere. We must also decide how many days we will need, where the studios are, which further services they offer, any possible discounts we may get…

Let’s take it step by step and just grab the telephone- a producer’s best friend. We have to be down-to-earth: our English can be a handicap, and our lack of experience doesn’t help. The best thing to do is to know what information we need to get:

  • Hiring price
  • Dimensions
  • Is it possible to paint it green? How much will they charge for this?
  • Is it available in the shooting days?
  • How many days in advance do we need to book it? Do we have to pay a deposit?
  • Discounts

Eventually we have a list of studios scattered all over the city. As we have a very tight budget we have to focus on to the most affordables ones. Once again we are working with words, suggestions, ideas… everything is too abstract. We need to go and see the studio and decide if it fits our requirements (if we really know which our requirements are!).

Oyster Card is popped in the pocket and we set off to Norh London. There we meet the CGI specialist. Coffees, decisions progressing, decisions going back, redesign of some shots… “We should shoot this with a chroma key. No, this one is better with a white background”. Scribbles, deletions, drafts… This video is constantly changing and sometimes it is one step forward and fifty steps back.

It is midday and we head off to the first studio hoping to find the answer to all our questions.

Its too small! Sometimes it seems that we will never shoot this project and all that we are doing is wasting our time, but we cannot get demoralized.

Hopeful, we go to another nearby studio.  We haven’t made an appointment, but the studio are professional and friendly and answer our questions.

Things pick up, it seems that we have a place to shoot our video. On our way home we write down which shots will need chroma key and which won’t, so we can make the shooting schedule and give them a time and date. We must take the right decisions in order to optimize time and money. We don’t want 13 actors strolling in the studio for 2 days when most of them can do their role in one single morning.

So, what else do we need? Yeah, right, the glass of course…

If you want to get more information about the project “Speak out against discrimination”, click here.

For more information about Spectacle, click here.