A Touching Point

So my two week placement is over. I have had such a good two weeks. Below is my final document with a list of who I believe to be appropriate Female presenters:

‘Running Wild’
Female Presenters


Ellie Harrison


Harrison grew up in rural Gloucestershire, "living off the land". At various times she worked in Zimbabwe, camped by and canoed on Lake Kariba and visited both Canada and Zimbabwe to observe wildlife before going to university. She has a BA from King's College, London, where she studied Geography and Ecology, graduating in 2000.


Seen on:
The One Show, Michaela’s Wild Challenge, Wild about your Garden, Country Tracks, Daily Planet and Countryfile.


Clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbBssTmoMQ
http://www.ellie-harrison.com/showreel/showreel.html




Liz Bonnin


Liz Bonnin is a French presenter who has worked on television in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. She currently works for the BBC.


Seen on:
Bang goes the Theory, Museum of Life, Autumnwatch, Star Gazing Live and Country Tracks


Clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfrGd1q_o2M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5tL5ReKmZY




Julia Bradbury


Bradbury is an English presenter born to a Greek Mother.


Seen on:
Railway Walks, Rough Guide, Ultimate Briton – Climbing, Kill it Cook it Eat it and Countryfile


Clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2CwNKWZYUY&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhWXw3mI1Ks




Kate Humble


Wikipedia says -
Kate Humble (born 12 December 1968) is an English television presenter, mainly for the BBC, specialising in wildlife and science programs. She is also the president of the RSPB.


Seen on:
Amazon Abyss, Animal Park – Wild in Africa, Seawatch, Ultimate Caving and Pacific Abyss amongst many others.


Clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_JoOZ0WK64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABbYGF4Xz4c




Female Adventurers


Tori James


- Grew up on a farm
- Completed duke of Edinburgh
- Completed a Geography Degree at Royal Holloway
- Worked for British Schools Exploring Society
- In 2005 she was part of the first every all female team to complete the Polar Challenge
- Was the first Welsh woman to climb Mount Everest
- Was the youngest Briton to Climb Mount Everest




Katharine Tetley


- Degree in African politics
- Worked as Lawyer for three years post training
- Took a gap year and taught in schools in Tanzania
- Travelled in Malawi and Zimbabwe and Lived in Uganda
- Lived in Zambia and managed two camps
- She spent 6 weeks travelling around Mozambique
- Some of her holidays have been spent trekking up to camp 2 on Nanga Parbat, Pakistan, Annapurna and Everest Base Camp treks in Nepal
- Canoeing down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea and travelling by train from Beijing




Tanya Streeter


- World famous free diver
- Held the world record for ‘no limits free diving’ at 160 meters
- She has featured on many TV shows on Animal Planet and the BBC
- Presented a show on BBC TWO called Shark Therapy




Katie-Jane L'Herpiniere


- Worked as a model for M&S and Alexander McQueen amongst others
- Completed a six moth trek other the Great Wall of China
- She and her Husband became the first people to ever achieve this
- She has cycled through Ethiopia




Tippi Degre


- Grew up in Africa and played with wild animals
- Had a documentary made about her on Discovery
- She is now 21 and studying film in Paris




Tanya Trevor Saunders


Her father worked on ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘Gorillas in the Mist’. He also set up the AEFF (African Environmental Film Foundation). Tanya loved being able to go on the sets, meet the actors and crew and be involved in the filming process. After finishing her A-levels she went back to Africa for two years. Here she did many things including co-writing the narrative for the TV broadcast ‘Keepers of the Kingdom’. Following this she went on to university in Edinburgh, despite being encouraged to go to Oxford or Cambridge, to study Law. She has achieved many things including completing the Safari half marathon at Lewa Downs in Kenya.

It seems a shame to me that I am having to work so much in the evenings at giraffe as well as Touch in the day. I love both jobs but seem to have worn myself out completely doing them both at the same tim…effectively working an 80 hour week! Crazy.


That aside I have learnt a great deal, got to meet some amazing people and achieved my goal of getting through potentially the busiest days of my university life.

Nice To Meet You

Another good day at Touch. Today I took it upon myself to get to know the team better. We had lunch together in the garden outside and they sat politely as I interrogated them. It was very interesting to me to learn each of their stories.

Here is an interview with my closest colleague Alex:

Alex Interview.mp3

Mid Week

The last couple of days I have spent doing research for new shows in the mornings and then working on finishing the correct presenter in the afternoons. Not only this but have done some fairly random tasks as well, such as helping with design problems (as I have much experience with photoshop etc) as well as teaching people how to do things. Here is a tutorial I made for Simon about how to draw a transparent box in order to see text clearer:

Not only this but I have been given the task of researching a new TV show they are working on. It is based around the new popular sport in America ‘Roller Derby’ that is now taking over the UK.

The range of tasks I am being set is keeping me on my toes and im finding it all very interesting.

...another begins

Wow can you believe it, the sun is STILL shining! The photo to the right here is the proof...that is where I had lunch. What a day!
Not only did I meet in my break with my good friend Cornish Mike (mentioned in many previous posts) but I discovered that one of the employees at Touch is in fact a long lost acquaintance from home. Rich Cracknell is someone I knew from around college and was friends with a few of my 'group'. We had a chat today and confessed recognising each other and he offered to show me the room he spends most of his time; the editing suit on site. It was very interesting to see...yet strange to think that some programs that millions of people are watching gets processed and worked on in these offices I am working in...very exciting.

The rest of the day was spent looking more into presenters. The ones i had chosen were too main stream. Touch were looking for someone fresh faced but with experience in the wild and with a new, young, energetic approach...back to the drawing board!

One week ends...

And so my first week at touch has come to a close. With all the bak holidays and such we have only had a four day week. Im not going to say it hasn't been a busy one though. With starting a new job on the sixth of april and now doing this placement at the same time I am very much looking forward to some well deserved rest.

The boys at Touch have informed me that Simon is not around the following week so I have said my goodbyes to him. The last task he set me was to look into a new program that they were about to have commissioned and from there find an appropriate presenter. For the sake of privacy I cannot discuss it on here but the rough idea was to find the next FEMALE Bear Grylls/Steve Backshall. Someone who was not afraid to put herself in dangerous position but someone we could perhaps relate to.

Here are my initial ideas:

Female Presenters:

Ellie Harrison

Info:

Wikipedia says -

Harrison grew up in rural Gloucestershire, "living off the land". At various times she worked in Zimbabwe, camped by and canoed on Lake Kariba and visited both Canada and Zimbabwe to observe wildlife before going to university. She has a BA from King's College, London, where she studied Geography and Ecology, graduating in 2000.

Seen on:

The One Show, Michaela’s Wild Challenge, Wild about your Garden, Country Tracks, Daily Planet and Countryfile.

Clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbBssTmoMQ

http://www.ellie-harrison.com/showreel/showreel.html

Liz Bonnin

Info:

Wikipedia says -

Liz Bonnin is a French presenter who has worked on television in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. She currently works for the BBC.

Seen on:

Bang goes the Theory, Museum of Life, Autumnwatch, Star Gazing Live and Country Tracks

Clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfrGd1q_o2M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5tL5ReKmZY

Julia Bradbury

Info:

Bradbury is an English presenter born to a Greek Mother and a Farther from Derbyshire.

Seen on:

Railway Walks, Rough Guide, Ultimate Briton – Climbing, Kill it Cook it Eat it and Countryfile

Clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2CwNKWZYUY&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhWXw3mI1Ks

Kate Humble

Info:

Wikipedia says -

Kate Humble (born 12 December 1968) is an English television presenter, mainly for the BBC, specialising in wildlife and science programs. She is also the president of the RSPB.

Seen on:

Amazon Abyss, Animal Park – Wild in Africa, Seawatch, Ultimate Caving and Pacific Abyss amongst many others.

Clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_JoOZ0WK64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABbYGF4Xz4c

Touch Take Two

Over the last two days I have been following a similar pattern as on my first day.

I have been getting in every morning at around 9.30 am and being given the news papers by Emily (that or getting them myself on my way in), going through them for a couple of hours jotting down my ideas and anything that caught my eye. Its an interesting approach and im enjoying the challenge.

Sadly I have come in at a very busy time for touch so I haven't been able to spend as much time with the other members of staff as I would like but I am enjoying watching them all work and asking about what they are getting up to.

As the day went on I did some more research on some of the ideas from day one:

The Sleepless Elite-

Sleep helps to repair brains and bodies

Clock gene (dna for less sleep)

Vietnamese man had 33years without sleep (Thai Ngoc)

Father and daughter claim to need only 1-2 hours sleep and still worked two jobs

Morvan’s Fibrillary Chorea – Genetic disorder that stops sleeping

Ive had an idea based around 'Britain’s sleepless street/sleepless office'. This would be where two different groups try to go a week with out sleep. Or compare two families; one that gets too much sleep, one that doesn’t get enough. Feature on Thai Ngoc.

A Touch of the real world...

Today was the first day of my placement at Touch Productions on queens Square in Bath.

What an amazing day to start the two weeks I have there! It has to have been the hottest 

day of the year so far.

The day started with me meeting members of the team, mainly Alex and Simon. They are the leaders of the Development team. I soon learn that this is the department I will be spending most of my time with. After being introduced to the business and who they are and what they do they get me straight to work.

My first task is idea generation. I am given a couple of newspapers and they ask me to look through the articles for any headlines that jump out, any subjects that seem to speak TV.

I spend over an hour doing this task, nervous that everything i'm coming up with is utter rubbish! My inital ideas consist of:

• Briton – time left in power
• To what extent is terrorism justified
• Cancer – curable?
• Crazy obsessions – p11 the sun, collecting horse hair £5000
• Football idols – new celeb culture
• Cleep walking – man drink driving
• Secret dare devils – new york skyscraper p19 sun
• Sand sculptures – unpaid hobbies
• Elephant under a house – p27 sun
• Sarah Fergason – loosing weight
• Life on a submarine
• The Sleepless Elite
• The Press – Life as a photographer/jurnalist
• Diets – prove/disprove diets
• Can you live happily without sex?
• Too Old Too Young – pressures of growing up
• Insomnia

I then collected the ideas and put them into smaller categories that would be easier to discuss:

Crazy Obsessions 

• Collecting Horse Hair 
• Collectors in general 
• Sand Sculptures 
• Unpaid Hobbies 

Football Idols 

• Obsession with Footballers
• New Celeb Culture 
• Past, Present and future of the game 

The Sleepless Elite 

• People that sleep for 4 hours and lead fuller lives 
• Sleep Walking – drink driving 
• Insomnia 

Secret Dare Devils 

• Man Caught in new York Base Jumping 
• Human Spider 

Diets 

• Series of programs testing different diets 
• Celeb Stories (Sarah Ferguson) 

The Press 

• Life as a photographer 
• Waiting days for one photograph 
• The lengths a reporter will go to just to get a story

I then had a meeting with Alex and Simon about my ideas. 

We discussed all ideas, of which 3 or 4 stuck out. I loved the way we bounced the ideas off each other and got them off the ground. We then honed these ideas even further to make them work better as TV shows. 

• The decades of celeb (footballers)
• Sleepless Street (office, or two families) 
• The Press 
• Defying the law for a thrill (secret dare devils) 

I then spent the afternoon working on the shows research, looking into ideas for them and digging deeper.

On finishing the day I found that the decades of celeb wasn’t going to work, they all seemed to inter link from the 50’s onward. I managed to come up with 4 main sections for the last 150 years; Explorers (pre 1900), Inventors (1900 - 1950), Performers (1950 - 2000) and Footballers/Reality (2000 - present). This might work but we'll have to see tomorrow!

All in all it was an interesting and exciting day. Its off to work now, but Im looking forward to tomorrow already!