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.
“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.
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.”
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”.
“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.
Please see the timings for the RTS Craft Skill Masterclasses below:
10.30am: Registration opens
11.00am: Introduction and Welcome
11.00am – 12.15pm: Masterclass 1 - Sound
Speakers: Phil Bax, Sound Recordist and Mixer
Greg Gettens, Head of Broadcast Factual Sound, Molinare
Chair: Emma Wakefield, Managing Director, Lambent Productions
12.15pm – 1.00pm: Lunch
1.00pm – 2.15pm: Masterclass 2 - Camerawork
Please see the timings for the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses below:
10.30am: Registration opens
11.00am: Introduction and Welcome
11.00am – 12.00pm: Masterclass 1 - Journalism
Speaker: Clive Myrie, Journalist and Presenter, BBC News
Chair: Naomi Goldsmith
12.00pm – 12.45pm: Lunch
12.45pm – 1.45pm: Masterclass 2 - Factual Entertainment
Speaker: Nav Raman, Founder and Creative Director, Chatterbox
Dunnett was able to draw on her vast experience of developing and making programmes for all terrestrial channels. She joined Channel 4 from Scottish indie Raise the Roof in 2016 where her credits included BBC One’s Holiday of My Lifetime with Len Goodman.
The masterclass helped students understand how different types of programmes fit into the schedules by unpicking popular programmes to show the simple rules of formatted factual.
The RTS Midlands event was held at the National Motorcycle Museum on Solihull on the same day as the Centre’s Programme Awards.
Wildlife cinematographer Sophie Darlington (the BBC’s Planet Earth II and documentary feature African Cats) and director of photography Christopher Titus King, who straddles the documentary (BBC One’s Seven Ages of Britain) and drama (the History mini-series, The Bible) genres, discussed camerawork at the RTS Craft Skills Masterclasses.
