Whilst I have been in full time education I have tried to sample as much of the industry as possible through work experience. I have managed to get a range of different jobs ranging from an assistant radio producer for over a year at BBC to a days work experience at a mobile application company.

BBC

01/08/2010 – 10/09/2011

Assistant Producer

Worked for over a year as an assistant producer at BBC Radio Norfolk helping with the ‘Stephen Bumfrey Show’ in which I went in every week. My roles included logging music, drawing up cues, entertaining guests and even going on air. Had the opportunity to go on the local football quiz show which I gracefully came in third place on. The experience was invaluable to me as it was my first opportunity of working in the industry on a regular basis and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Soak

10/06/2013 – 14/06/2013

Web Designer

Spent one working week at a digital marketing website in Norwich called ‘Soak’. Went through an interview process and was eventually able to create a concept and design a website as well as learn a little more about coding and how to use WordPress to create a fully functioning online website. Below are the designs of my student social website aimed to help university students organise their projects, coursework, exams etc. The brand was called ‘Student Hub’ and the process of planning, creating grey scale designs, brand creation, adding colour, coding the website and then the steps after about how to market my final product was something I incorporated in my university work which was valuable to me. It also gave me an insight into how a web design company works and the process they need to go through in order to tender for projects.

Click here to see my designs

Oakley Mobile

16/09/2013

I was lucky enough to be allowed to go into an app development and deployment company for a day to see how they work as a company and to get a better insight into how apps are created and how they differ to websites. Oakley specialise in augmented reality which gave me an even better insight into the future of new media and what one of the next big media craze could be. I was able to offer something back to the company however as they were tendering for a project for ‘Lincoln Museum of Life’ and they needed some pictures to get a better understanding of the task. Luckily I was in Lincoln at the time so was able to take a number of pictures of the museum and pass them onto Oakley and some were used in their pitch.

BeWILDerwood

18/06/2013

Designer

Whilst working at BeWILDerwood as a catering assistant I inquired and was able to work with the design team for a day looking at the work they do and how they go about doing it. I found the whole experience to be very helpful especially as this was my first chance to see how a company’s design team works as apposed to using outside companies. Also at this point I wasn’t sure what my specialty area would be and, despite designing for my university course, I still wasn’t too sure I wanted to go down the design route but after the day with them I realised that this was definitely a career path I should investigate.

Below you can see some examples of my work. The main task I was set was to create the design for a banner to be placed at the side of the road outside the parking for the park in order to attract people to visit for the October Half Term. I was allowed to use their brand colours, fonts and even some images they created previously and then had to design the banner keeping to the brand image. (I was able to then use the structure of the company to aide my university projects by using a number of techniques they did such as creating brand colours which made it easier for me).

YMCA Showroom

23/01/2013 – 05/05/2013

Freelance camera operator and editor

Helped out a local youth and business center as a freelance camera operator and editor to make any short films advertising the company or any events they were hosting. Unfortunatly due to time restrictions and other commitments I was only able to contribute on one project which involved filming a wedding fayre for them to use on their website as an example of what the showroom can offer for weddings.

Below is the final video…

ITV

14/08/2013 – 15/08/2013

Camera Assistant

Shadowed a freelance camera operator who works for ITV working alongside him to film a couple of stories including one about a rare spider and another about a dog from cambodia. Also assisted to film the weather on locations and then was lucky enough to be shown around the Norwich studios where I was not only able to see the facilities but also to see the complete process from filming to editing to creating the live show. Whilst on location I helped by offering my opinion about the shots and also assisted through other tasks such as holding up lighting reflectors and carrying equipment.

Below are the two features I assisted with…

Spiders from ITV Anglia on Vimeo.

Natalie Gray Cambodia dog from ITV Anglia on Vimeo.