#creativityworkss7

By Natalie Turner-Sylvester

Rob Janke, producer, mixer and sound recordist, taught us more in depth about the essentials when it comes to audio for a good quality and professional podcast.

The session began with Rob showing us two audio tracks in which we then discussed the elements and how well they work. I love music and enjoyed listening to opposing genres and styles and seeing how they told a story through a compilation of sounds.

Hacks if you are on a budget!

Rob gave us some tips if you are on a budget such as using duvets and blankets on windows and walls to absorb echo sounds in the room. We had suggestions of equipment for example the SM57 or 8 microphone which is widely used within the media. 

Rob reinforced that the sound needs to be clear and to avoid clipping. This requires the level to be right and produce a nice smooth curve.

Delivery:

- Sit correct distance from mic (usually 6-10 inches)

- Mouth needs to directly face mic

- Avoid wearing noisy clothing

VITAL: *Listen back on whichever speakers the audience is most likely to hear your podcast on and question does this really relate to them?*

By Natalie Turner-Sylvester

Caryn Coley, founder of IDEA Suite (est. 2018), gave us a masterclass all about freelance and how to legally and officially set yourself up as a freelancer.

A brief background of IDEA Suite:

Caryn told us that she frequently experienced being the only person of colour in a work environment and this did not sit well with her. She witnessed the nepotism and under representation of BAME people around her and decided to do something about it. Subsequently, she came up with the idea of IDEA Suite to enhance diversity amongst institutions and introduce fresh and recurrently under recruited talent.

She told us about her journey, where she began in advertising and PR which has given her transferable skills in order for her to establish her own business. She said that with freelance “everyone can do it, but not everyone can do it well” and therefore highlighted the importance of hard work and perseverance.

We had a debate and spoke about the pros and cons of freelance vs a 9-5 job. This was interesting, and Caryn says how being a freelancer is liberating but can be challenging and it requires a lot of work. This is because you are your own boss and therefore have to manage your own finances and finding your own clients etc.

Quotes of the masterclass:

“The world is literally your office” – better get used to it if you want to progress eh!

“Network Network Network”

“Let your creativity flag fly”

“Self-care is the key”

“How long have you got? Complacency will be your biggest downfall” – I agree. There is never time for complacency, you can always try harder, keep learning and improving.

I will round off with this quote that reached out to me and reassured me that it is okay to:

“Don’t think if you have one failure that it’s the end of the road, it’s not.”

09.11.2018

LinkedIn had a masterclass that I attended at their London branch. The masterclass was about Content Marketing and it was a very insightful masterclass.

I learned:

Content marketing is there to help and educate the buyer, a lot of the times this is achieved from story telling. Within content marketing, you do not want to lead from the product, you want to lead to the product which is how financial services build of their buyers.

Context

Question?

So What is the role of a social content? And how do you participate in a meaningful way?

- Context saying at LinkedIn -

“If Content is King and Distribution is Queen, then  the Context of your story is the Kingdom”

The Professional Mindset

When someone is on LinkedIn they try to make themselves more productive and successful, they are not there to socialise with their friends. They are their to look for jobs they may be interested in or to follow industry trends and look at topics that are of interest to them.

If you have a buyer that uses LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, the mindset that they are in, a.k.a the context that they are in when they are using these networks is really important when you think about your linkedIn marketing strategy.

LinkedIn did a survey with there research team and they looked at what the most influential sources of content were. 63% said they were looking at peer recommendations and what motivates their members to engage with there content on linkedIn specifically. 43% said that the last piece of content they really enjoyed was a) inspiration or b) get straight to the point. They also looked at the top 5 reasons for content engagement and 60% said that the content they were consuming on LinkedIn was relevant to them, 57% said it was educational or informative. LinkedIn pride themselves around the content that running through their feed because it is relevant. If you’re tailoring your LinkedIn feed to be adaptive to your everyday, it will really benefit your progression whether it is professional or personal.  

My Art World: 90 second Documentary- Princess Jiboye

Marty Groves is a film maker and film production teacher based in Bristol and London. He enjoys working in a range of formats such as music videos, documentaries and shorts films. Matty likes to dabble in different genres from black comedies to dramas. His films have been screened at international and domestic festivals and He has been fortunate enough to receive a Royal Television Society Award.

Matty gave us an insight to the world of film making, the master class started off with a questionnaire that questioned our sentimental values and people who we are attached to and in close proximity with. Then Matty spoke in-depth about how he makes his film and which type of genres he is more interested in.

The master class became more exciting when we watched a few 90second documentaries. Then we stood in front of the class and presented our most precious and sentimental items that we would make our documentaries about and I chose my art work. To make our ideas stronger, our peers helped us develop our ideas further. Matty gave us a time frame of 45 mins to plan our documentaries. We then had 24hours to film, edit and upload our documentaries ready to present our finished pieces to the class the next day.

Room for improvement

When I presented my video, the most important aspect of my documentary that I needed to improve on was the sound of my voice. The feedback that I received was that my voice sounded robotic because I tried to reduce the background noise and I increased the gain to the maximum level owing to the fact that it was hard to hear my voice. To resolve this I added a voice over to the documentary.

06.11.2018

The master class with Lord Simon Jacobs about unleashing your inner weirdo was one of the best and most engaging sessions ever. He explained that from a young age, he was always different and always thinking of new and brilliant ideas and that is how he started the 3rd knipple blog when he was in school, it became popular and this is were his love for Media an Journalism stemmed from. He went to University in Nottingham and started a company called ‘Uni2’ which was a magazine for Uni students in Nottingham, sold his shares to his partners and started a new company called ‘Our Marketing Guys’ and this went on to win awards.

Simon also spoke about a list of people he classed as professional weirdos

Albert Einstein- He was not good in school, he didn’t do things the normal way, he had a natural appetite for doing things differently and even though he was not good in school he still changed the world with what he discovered.

Andre Agassi- Changed the world of Tennis, he changed the way people played tennis when he started to smash the ball at his opponents. He also started to wear different colours of clothing and he worked with Nikey to develop different designs.

Tinker Hatfield- Designed the first Nike air. He thinks about things differently, he came up with the bubble in the shoe and people doubted him and said it’s ridiculous and it would never work.

Pirates- Fought the system and changed it for the better, it was the most advanced society at the time. They didn’t care about race or gender, religion or sexual orientation, they were the first to have insurance; if your were injured you would still get paid.

Takeru Kobayashi- He destroyed the competitive hot dog eating competition, where he ate 150 hotdogs and his opponent ate 50.

Stephen Hawkings- not only did he prove medical science wrong, they told him he only had 2-3 years to live and ended up living 55 more years. He also changed the understanding of our world.

After his presentation, Lord Simon Jacobs gave us a contract saying that if we were to sign it we would have to say yes to everything that anyone asks us to do for 24 hours

Our task was to release our inner weirdo and talk about it and I decided to make a poster about my inner weirdo

To conclude this master class Simon showed us a quote from Steve Jobs that will stick with me for life:

The ones who are crazy to enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

By Natalie Turner-Sylvester

Trip to Sky Academy

With Sky being advocates for tackling plastic pollution, having launched the Sky Ocean Rescue project, our task was to create a short documentary/elevator pitch concerning the plastic pollution problem and our solution to this. We were split into groups and had to work under pressure with a short deadline. We managed to work together and filter through ideas, choosing the best one which we feel would have a wider reach.

Roles:

- Producer: Liz

- Camera Operator: Abbas

- Editor: Tila

- Reporters: Natalie (me), Shanieka, Kimelle

Our idea was inspired from Abbas’ original thought of having water tanks sponsored by brands (such as Evian) in supermarkets. You would bring your own reusable bottle to the station and therefore reduce the amount of plastic being wasted. We expanded on this idea, deciding to not place the water tanks in supermarkets but dotted around in public areas around the city of London and spread this nationwide. Our project name was kept sharp and simple, “Top-up Water Stop” with our Twitter hashtag - #WaterStop.

This was a very enjoyable task as we got to utilise the camera equipment, see the functioning of green screens and use the editing software.

All 3 group’s documentaries can be found here: https://youtu.be/AZsKsVhRZjg

Today’s masters class was with Alexandra Chelbowski, Mel Karalis and Caroline Aliwell from Citizens Advice. Alexandra deals with the communications and engagement aspect of the company, Mel handles the news and press and Caroline handles the campaigns and public affairs.

Citizens Advice is an organisation that mainly focuses on peoples Debt, Housing and Benefits issues. It started 69 years during World War II and is about to celebrate there 70th birthday in 2019. In 2017, Citizens Advice helped over 2.7million people and they have over 30,300 volunteers working for the company. They also changed their name from Citzens Advice Bureau.

What is communications?

We simplify, tell and sell our story to reach different audiences

Communications and engagement

- Internal and facing public

- Event team

- Brand

- We focus on what people need to know or do

- We think about how we can make information engaging

- Tailor information based on the audience

By Natalie Turner-Sylvester

Simon Jacobs (or should I say Lord Jacobs) gave us a masterclass all about how to ‘unleash your inner weirdo’. It was a very fun and interactive session, where we did a task drawing anything to fill the circles within 5 minutes:

Simon told us about his background and some funny stories that come with being a ‘weirdo’. He set up ‘The 3rd Knipple’ blog which was popular in school and gave him the bug for journalism and media. At university, he went on to create a magazine ’Uni2’ for his university, which revolutionised student living in Nottingham. As part of his quirkiness and ‘weirdness’, with the selling of the magazines meant that he had to create a religion, crazy right?! Later on, he sold his shares in Uni2 and set up ‘Our Marketing Guys’ which eventually won awards. Ultimately, his ventures led to him talking with a friend who called him weird within the first 5 minutes. That was his eureka moment! He realised that everything he did up until that point was different and that “there’s value in being weird” and he told us to “bottle it”. I like this analogy of keeping it contained within you and never letting go of it! From here, he realised that he could help others unleash their inner weirdo and release creativity. Consequently, that has become his brand, people can easily identify and relate to him.

Simon says…

Getting creative again

-          Don’t worry about being rubbish

-          start drawing

-          get a canvas

-          pick up an instrument

-          start writing

-          build something

-          look at old childhood stuff

learn to explore again

-          take a different route to work

-          go into that shop you always pass

-          meet a neighbour

-          take a random course

-          take a random trip

-          look up!

-          Remember the fun you’re having – “don’t go through it passively”

Overall, I love how Simon is unapologetically himself, which I think is the best way to be.

Thank you, Simon!

Unleash your inner weirdo guys! Say YES for 24 hours. I signed on the dotted line.

Finally, I’ll leave you guys with my acronym: 

(So with the letter D, I couldn’t decide out of daring or different, so I merged the two and created a funky word. Yes I just had to stretch it and be weird. Ah well, that’s the whole point, right?! 

Enjoy...