That made their presence a waste of two people’s time, because my colleague had to spend much of her time finding things that might interest the sullen teenager sat opposite her.
Why force someone to use up an opportunity that many people would pay to have?
Natural selection
When we did the pilot version of Me In TV, the only rule for Community Links was this: they had to choose people who had a pre-existing interest in working in TV.
Thank goodness we did.
One of my favourite bits of feedback from the day was from Neil, who ran the edit training:
It’s so great that these guys really care. You can tell they’re really excited to be here because they keep
asking questions about everything. And that makes it fun for us too.
The people who will benefit most are the people who have already gone out of their way to do something related.
The guys we brought in that day included a budding actor/presenter, a cameraman, and an editor. They had no idea that spending time on those things might create opportunities for them a few years down the line, but they did it anyway.
A pre-existing interest is people picking themselves – the
In autumn 2010 I began work on what has turned out to be the pilot version of Me In TV.
The original idea was simply to give the young people their first contacts in the industry. The whole group would meet, chat for a while, then split off into pairs – each young person would be matched with a TV pro who is experienced in their specific area of interest (so a youngster interested in camera work would be paired with a cameraman).
in my mind over a few weeks. As soon as I started discussing it with other people, though, it evolved beyond all recognition.
Thinking bigger
Jamie, a friend who does executive coaching, encouraged me to think bigger: more people, more time, and more benefits all round.
Then I found Mark, the colleague who was to help me run the programme, and he made that more ambitious vision a reality: it turned it into a full day of practical skills, close contact with TV pros, and career advice.
We ended up giving three young guys a morning of camera training, an hour of on-screen training with a well-respected presenter, and an afternoon of edit training.
Better yet, everything they learnt contributed to a tangible outcome: by the end of the day each participant had created a 60-second film that focused everyone’s minds and
with others, an idea can develop into something you could never have imagined alone.
Up next…
This one-day project taught me a bunch of useful and interesting things, several of which I’ll write about in the context of this project.
It also sparked the idea for Me In TV. It wasn’t supposed to be the pilot version of anything – I just wanted to try something new – but the response from everyone involved was so great that I’m convinced there’s huge potential in the basic ideas:
1. Bring people with overlapping interests together
2. Give them a shared goal
3. Introduce the right amount of structure, and leave them the right amount of freedom
Somehow, accidentally, that worked out pretty well the first time around. Let’s hope it’s even better the
