Education & Training

RTS Student Masterclasses: Camerawork with Phil Mash and Geraint Warrington

Phil Mash and Geraint Warrington (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

Mash has worked widely on US series House Hunters International and also shot an interview with Stephen Hawking for US talk show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Warrington, who usually works in natural history on programmes such as Channel 5 series Ben Fogle: New Lives in the World, recently shot CBBC drama Wolfblood Secrets, his first outing as a drama DoP.

RTS Student Craft Masterclass: Editing with Pia Di Ciaula and Rick Barker

Pia Di Caula and Rick Barker (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

Is there a difference between editing TV drama and feature films? 

Pia Di Ciaula, film and TV editor specialising in drama: “On The Crown there is no difference because Stephen Daldry (the director) and I treat every episode like a feature film, but prior to that there was a big difference. 

“I moved to the UK (from North America) so I could edit independent films with the best directors and actors in the world.

RTS Student Masterclasses: Factual Entertainment with Nav Raman

Nav Raman (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

The secret of a successful TV format

“Simplicity is the key. When I was pitching, if I didn’t know what the idea was in two or three lines, I’d tell the producer to ask them to rethink it.

“As a commissioner I’d sometimes get a beautifully presented five-page document and get to the end of it and think ‘So what’s the show?’

“For me, the other big thing is purpose. As yourself "What’s the point?' Just because you can do it with TV cameras doesn’t mean it’s a TV show. You should be trying to answer a question.

RTS Student Craft Skills Masterclasses: Sound with Phil Bax and Greg Gettens

Phil Bax and Greg Gettens (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

Bax experienced the high life on BBC One documentary Supersized Earth, working on a ledge at the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Gettens added “explosions and bullets whizzing around people’s heads” to BBC One’s D-Day the Last Heroes.

Lambert Productions MD Emma Wakefield led the conversation at the RTS Craft Skills Masterclasses. 

RTS Student Masterclasses: Drama with Sophie Petzal

Sophie Petzal (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

She shared the pleasure and pain of writing drama with EastEnders boss John Yorke at this year’s RTS Student Programme Masterclasses. 

Script editing “was an invaluable way to learn about television production and writing … Having that ‘production head’ gave me an advantage in writing [my] first episode [of Wolfblood) …but I was still very much learning the ropes.”

RTS Student Masterclasses: Documentary with Brian Woods and Katie Rice

Brian Woods and Katie Rice (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

The duo were in conversation with Alex Graham, joint chief executive of Two Cities Television, who argued that True Vision “takes on the really important subjects, whether that’s poverty or human rights or inequality, but in a way that takes you directly into the heart of the human stories”.

RTS Student Masterclasses: Journalism with Clive Myrie

Clive Myrie (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)

The importance of role models

 “I’m a Northerner (Myrie was brought up in Bolton) and didn’t come from a media family. I was a second generation immigrant. (My parents) didn’t want me to become a journalist. 

"They wanted me to be a lawyer or a dentist, a respectable middle-class job for their first-born child born in the United Kingdom.

"Around the age of nine I had a paper round, I read the products that I was lobbing over the garden fences and as a result of that got interested in the world.  

ScreenSkills Trainee Finder programme applications open

The ScreenSkills scheme invites 75 more recruits for film and 40 more for television, from a variety of backgrounds, to apply for the scheme that offers paid work opportunities across the UK.

Previous film trainees have worked on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Peterloo, Stan and Ollie, and Lady Macbeth.

So you want to work in observational documentaries?

Havana Marking, Peter Beard, Lizzie Kempton and Peter Dale (Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian)
At an RTS Futures event in early November, National Film and Television School head of documentaries  Peter Dale chaired a debate on what it takes to be a great observational documentary film-maker. 

One of the panel, Lizzie Kempton, was the assistant producer on the Grierson Award-winning BBC Two film, How to Die: Simon’s Choice, which tells the story of a man with an aggressive form of motor neurone disease who chooses to end his life.