This year RTS Futures are joining forces with the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival Talent Schemes to host a celebration and party for you with some of the biggest names in the television industry.
This is a party like no other – an opportunity you could only dream of – a chance to meet the people behind some of the most talked about shows on British television, as we open the evening with a special Q&A session
The joint RTS Scotland/ScreenSkills event, held at BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay base, started with a panel discussion led by RTS Scotland Vice-Chair Gavin Smith and ended with a “speed networking” session.
“There have been well-publicised financial headwinds [facing the industry],” admitted BBC Scotland Commissioning Executive Steve Allen, “but it’s not all bad news”.
Highlighting the opportunities for Scottish production companies, he said: “We do have money that we’re spending, hoping to stimulate the industry in Scotland.”
Lyndsay Duthie, CEO of the Production Guild of Great Britain, said: “You have to sell yourself. There’s no point staying at home… jobs aren’t going to come to you. You’ve got to get yourself out there.”
She admitted: “It doesn’t matter if you’re giving an Oscar-winning speech… or it’s your very first interview, it’s still nerve-racking.”
With more than 100 soon-to-be graduates in attendance, it gave them a chance to speak to employers and industry experts as they consider the transition from education to the workplace.
Fittingly for a venue that has just seen its club survive in the Championship with a last-day win over Hull City, the event was compered by Match of the Day commentator and RTS Devon and Cornwall committee member, John Roder.
Are you working in Unscripted television but want to expand your contacts? …then come and join representatives from Screenskills and the Royal Television Society Scotland for a networking evening at BBC Scotland. There you’ll have the opportunity to meet the heads of production and managing directors of some of Scotland’s leading production companies currently making some of the UK’s most loved Unscripted programming.
"Networking isn’t a dirty word,” insisted RTS North West Chair and executive producer at Manchester drama indie Rope Ladder Fiction Cameron Roach. He was speaking at the start of an inspiring late-March Student Networking Day.
“People assume that to network you have to be gregarious,” he continued. “That is not the case.”
The three-hour speed networking evening, “The big connection”, saw guests being allocated a table and visited by professionals at eight-minute intervals, with everyone given the opportunity to introduce themselves and ask questions.
Sarah Joyce, head of unscripted at ScreenSkills, explained the choice of the evening’s theme: “Sometimes, people don’t really understand what unscripted TV is, or… appreciate that there’s such a breadth of content.
“I’ve always avoided the idea of networking like the plague, so the fact that I’m on this panel is quite wild,” admitted Jasmine Dotiwala.
She currently works for Netflix UK’s editorial and publishing team, and has more than 25 years’ experience in TV, including stints at Channel 4 News and MTV.
Dotiwala advised: “Stop thinking about it as networking… it’s about making it fun and palatable for you.
“It’s an old cliché – they say your network is your net worth…. I really now get that.
Meet 3 of the best networkers in the business - Jasmine Dotiwala, Warner Brothers’ Andrew Zein and Simone Pennant of The TV Collective - as they share their insights and anecdotes, and tell us just how they managed to keep their networks alive in these last months of Covid-19.
Hosted by Daisy Church, Media Trust.
The early November event was held against the backdrop of an exhibition, hosted by the StoryLab research institute – “Storytelling in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” – which offered a useful means of exploring traditional and new forms of storytelling across existing and new platforms.
