One of our Level 2 Media Production students, Josh Scott recently had the fantastic opportunity to create a short documentary with Fixers UK on asexuality. Not only did he have the chance to get involved with a great project, his documentary was liked so much that it is being broadcasted live on ITV Meridian on Thursday 8th May. We spoke with Josh to find out more about how he’s been getting on at Dv8 Sussex and how he was able to be a part of this opportunity.
“I joined Dv8 Sussex as a student in Productions Level 2. From day one it was an entirely new learning curve as all of the students and staff had to take part in a lip sync video. For a start, making a decision on what song to use was difficult, but the song that I suggested was chosen to produce the video to gave me slight encouragement in the production process. Before I came to Dv8 I was quite an isolated person and kept to myself. So going from being fairly isolated to being part of the production of a whole college video was a massive thing for me. Not only that but people had to volunteer for the roles as vocalists and I put myself forwards (taking one for the team!). I felt a bit embarrassed but it gave me the confidence to be able to cope in future with groups of people. There were many learning curves for me and all of these gave me skills which helped in the Fixers UK project.
What I like about Dv8 as a college is the smaller class environments and the comfortable atmosphere within them. Not only that but you get to take part in real opportunities with industry clients who offer their own experiences and professional advice. I was previously at City College and definitely feel the difference in engagement between both here and there. In particular what I noticed is that all the staff are really caring, not just about our well being or education but us as individuals. There’s a real sense of communication and respect between both parties.
Early on in my Productions course I was contacted by Fixers UK; a charity that works to “fix” particular issues that young people face by offering them financial support as well as guidance. They offered to speak to me about any ideas I had. Unfortunately after I responded I didn’t receive a response back. Normally I would give up, sulk for an hour or two and then forget about it all together. However, thanks to Dv8 my confidence has improved massively and I was willing to persist with making this great opportunity happen. I emailed Fixers UK again, researched how else I could get in contact with them and continued to try and get some form of communication back. Alongside getting in contact I began to brainstorm ideas to ensure that no matter what, I would have the viable research in order for them to approve of my idea. I finally came up with the idea of a documentary on asexuality. Mainly because I feel there is a lack of support for asexual people in the Brighton & Hove Community.
As I learned from Adam (one of the support tutors), you can never have enough research. So every spare moment I had I used to gather research until I finally heard back from Fixers UK. After a few months I managed to find out that they were turning up to a local venue in order to hear about young people’s ideas in the area. A few days beforehand I fixed up a presentation in order to pitch my idea. I used a programme kindly introduced by Esther Springett (Dv8 Productions Course Manager), called Prezi. When I pitched the idea, they loved it! Even though I didn’t have the time to show them my Prezi presentation. Times were then arranged to meet separately elsewhere and then the brainstorming really started from there. Once we had met up by ourselves I was introduced to their researcher who had the specific role of pitching to ITV. It turned out that they wanted to talk to me separately because they both liked my idea so much that they wanted to push it as an ITV broadcast. That’s when I showed them my presentation and research. I also spent the days waiting for a response researching more into asexuality and giving my experience as an asexual.
After waiting for ages they told me the good news; my idea was going to be made as a documentary for ITV and I would play the part as interviewee! If it wasn’t for Dv8 this opportunity would never have happened. Not just because they helped me contact Fixers UK but because they gave me the motivational boost I needed as well as the confidence in myself to persist with this.” – Josh Scott
You can find a write up of Josh’s experience with Fixers UK shooting the ITV broadcast here.
We’d like to give Josh a big congratulations for not only persevering with his idea but taking it further than what he had thought possible.
