20 year old Daniel Campbell, was a trainee editor in Autumn 2016. He writes about his journey in gaining employment in post production at ITV.

"After leaving higher education in 2015, claiming Jobseekers Allowance, with no degree and living with my mum and twin brother at home in Birmingham, I had a vague idea that I wanted to endeavour a career in the media industry. I volunteered in different work experience placements and lived in Italy for 2 months working as a EU funded Media Intern at an arts restoration company in Florence, however not getting any paid work the whole time.

This was frustrating and the prospect of not being able to move out of home and build my life independently whilst working in the media, simply for financial reasons, was not good for my self confidence and I considered quitting the idea altogether. That was until I was offered a place on the MAMA Youth Project as a Trainee video editor. The fact that (at the time of applying) over 80% of graduates of the training were still in full time paid employment in the media, six months after completing the training, gave me a drive to pursue a place when seeing an advert for What’s Up TV training on Twitter. Enough confidence that this could be my break, in fact, that when I was given an interview, I transferred my Jobseekers allowance claim to Hounslow JobCentre in West London and rented a room nearby in the hope that I would be given a place.

Being a MAMA Youth Project alumni has been my bridge to getting paid work in TV. After graduating as a Trainee Video Editor on What’s Up TV Season 11 and going on to a six-week work placement at Sky UK was an amazing experience. Being inside a corporate media company for the first time, meeting a range of professionals, gave me a new perspective on the scope of the different post-production roles that come into play in TV broadcasting. Going from Editing and Colour Grading, to Content Handling and Bookings, to Compliance and Quality Control. Overall it was a brilliant experience and a great way of networking within a company and learning about a wide range of job roles.

These experiences combined and the training in Avid Media Composer that we had with Head of Technical Operations, Mostafa Nagy and Executive Producer, Bob Clarke helped massively when I interviewed for my current role as a Systems Operator at ITV. When asked questions testing not just my technical know how but also my situational thinking and judgement my answers were to a high standard. I think this was because of the lessons we had on the changes that post-production has gone through in the past 20 or so years and specifically the switch from tape to file based editing and linear to non-linear. It gave me some context as to where editing is now.

Over the 13 weeks I went from having no previous experience in Avid Media Composer to being able to ingest media, cut sound beds and complete edits all to a range of producers’ needs. To sum up, Bob and Mostafa train you in a way that when you leave MAMA Youth you can continue to widen your knowledge base by yourself and can think about why your workflows are the way they are and how they can be improved.

It is definitely worth applying to the MAMA Youth Project as it has transformed my life and it can transform yours too.” - August 2017