Work experience and networking

Work experience at New Enterprise studios

 From the 17th of July till the 21st of July I had a work experience event with New enterprise studios, my role was to help out Wayne and his crew in whatever way I could, this involved spray painting objects, painting sets, observing and more. This event took place over 4 days in one 5 day work week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I did the work experience course alongside another young man who was also my age with whom I made a short 2 minute video with at the end of our work experience course as well as taking part in an episode of their podcast named ‘movie madness’ which can be found on Spotify. 

Set building and painting 

Throughout the week I was helping build the set for an upcoming project that new enterprise studios is creating. It is a short sci-fi film called labyrinth which is due to be finished by late October, I helped by spray paining some props to be used to create an alien creature for the film I also helped a man named Glen with the set building by cutting the wood needed to build the platform that the alien will be held upon and then later helping to pain those prices of wood to match the images that the set is based upon. 

Prop making and make up effects

Wayne Thompson is the leading makeup and effects designer for all of New enterprise studios’ practical effects, so on one of the days he showed me and the other person how to create fake blood using specialised colourings and cornstarch. He also showed us the way to make cuts and wounds with his makeup kit which included many different pallets and gels to create 3d effects with the equipment such as a zombie bite effect where he applied a special kind of putty in his are that made it look as though he had been bitten, this was quite insightful and allowed us to see in person how to make those type of effects, as well as what they should look like when you do them correctly. Wayne also showed us his room where he makes all of his props for their videos, he showed us what he uses to make his props as well as cost effective methods to make effects for cheaper. He also allowed us to use his props for our own video which I will mention later. 

What I learned 

In my time spent at new enterprise studios I learned a few things about the media industry and the craft itself, firstly I learned that the media industry (especially in the north east) is a very tight knit group of people who all rely on each other and support each other because of how few people actually are in the industry. I also learned that becoming a part of the group of people who can maintain a career in media (specifically the sector that new enterprise associates itself with) is quite difficult as there isn’t much money to be made unless you are apart of a big studio company rather that being an independent film maker like new enterprise. However with all of that being said, the people at new enterprise studios are hopeful, as am I, that the industry may still have life in it, despite new enterprise studios’ current threat of closure for which I have a great deal of sympathy. 

What I created

In my week at new enterprise studios I was allowed to partake in the set construction for their upcoming short film ‘labyrinth’ as I previously stated. For that project I helped shape wood into correct sizes, paint and spray paint the set and props and help with some assembly, for this I will be credited in the final projects end credits. Secondly on the Friday the other boy and I where allowed some time to create a short 2 minute film about whatever topic we liked, we were also allowed to use the entire studio (bar the two rooms they were working in) and whatever props we wanted from Wayne’s prop room to shoot the video. The topic we chose was a horror comedy type video where a person (played by me) thinks he is being haunted, however it turns out he is actually being stalked by a murderer (played by the other boy) who eventually chops of his arm and chases after him. The video obviously isn’t of great quality as we shot it on our phones and edited it within the space of the day using editing software on our phones. I am however grateful for the creative freedom we were given to create our video. Finally, me and the other boy took part in an episode of a podcast ran by one of the employees named Henry Thompson who had been assisting us throughout the week. The topic of the podcast was about our future aspirations and our opinions on the media industry as well as our interests and favourite movies. As of writing this the episode hasn’t been released but I presume it will be within a few weeks.