The new freelance world - from TV to content creation and beyond

This session is part of the Connect & Inspire strand which offers a variety of sessions, from in-person networking and online roundtables to in-depth case studies, designed to promote the sharing of knowledge and the building of relationships across Unscripted TV.

Faced with a continuing downturn in TV production and commissioning, many unscripted freelancers and staffers are looking at how they can use their skills and experience to diversify within the industry to stay in work now and to develop their future careers. This session explores the opportunities to diversify into other sectors within the screen industry either alongside or instead of TV work. This will include the growth in online video content production, screen opportunities in teaching, training, marketing etc as well as turning side hustle passions into sources of income.

This session is part of a series of sessions from Screenskills responding to the TV recession and will feature a panel of contributors who have moved away from traditional TV to run successful new careers within the industry.

Who it's for

From runners to executive producers no one has been immune from this recession, so this session is aimed at both freelancers and staffers across all levels of the unscripted TV industry – researchers, assistant producers, PCs, PMs producer/directors, series producers etc - who have struggled for work in the last year and who are looking for advice on how to stay in work and navigate their long-term careers.

The majority of the Unscripted Skills Fund (USF) online short course offering is for those at early career stage and above. As a result, we generally require applicants to have at least three credits (unless working in a traditionally uncredited role). If you strongly feel you would still benefit from the training, please email USF@screenskills.com so we can assess if an exception should be made.

We are committed to ensuring all our courses are accessible to everyone. Please email the above address if you have any access requirements and we will be delighted to help, be that clarifying the form such interaction is likely to take or discussing reasonable adjustments.

What it covers

Our industry is facing both short-term economic downturn and long-term seismic change as audiences shift from linear to on demand TV and we experience rapid technological development, changing consumer demand and content delivered across multiple platforms. Faced with the possibility that it may now be difficult for some to sustain long-term full-time TV production careers, this session will aim to explore the new content opportunities away from traditional TV and how to diversify further within the screen industry with a specialist panel of contributors who are all managing to do that.

Hosted by experienced TV business and creative leader Mark Hill, the panel will discuss and answer audience questions on the changing content landscape.

• Digital production: Our panel will discuss how branded content is changing and the appetite from corporates and charities to use storytelling video content to connect with customers, decision-makers and staff across multiple platforms and how social media platforms are democratising and changing content creation. They’ll discuss the opportunities for TV production freelancers, roles and the different ways of working compared to TV production.
• Diversifying away from production: We will also be looking at the opportunities to use production skills and experience to develop new careers within the wider screen industry and we will hear from contributors who have managed to do that, either alongside or instead of traditional freelance TV work, from lecturing to training, mentoring, marketing and more as well as how we can use our creative skills to developing side hustle passions.
• The new freelance production model? We’ll be asking our panel whether we are now entering a new era for TV freelancers where portfolio working may be the new normal for many of us across a number of job roles and production is more about content rather than just TV? Is the TV freelance model broken or just evolving?

Host

Mark Hill has worked in unscripted TV for over 30 years, running TV production businesses for the last two decades, launching RDF from scratch in Bristol and running BBC Factual there too. He has created and showrun multiple long-running series and worked across most unscripted genres in his career. He now works as a consultant advising small production indies, businesses across the creative digital sector and senior leaders on managing their businesses and careers as well as still working as an active executive producer and development consultant.

Speakers

Laetitia Nneke is a series producer with 19 years’ experience working across both factual entertainment formats and large-scale entertainment shows. Her background includes casting and producing some of the nation’s favourite shows including Flirty Dancing, The Eurovision Song Contest and Children in Need. Laetitia has worked on a variety of sensitive and challenging formats and is well versed in compliance and welfare protocol and has earned a reputation for establishing relationships with closed communities and sourcing contributors with unique and inspiring stories. Laetitia produced the ITV documentary will.i.am: The Blackprint, an exploration of black British identity nominated for a Visionary Arts Award. Laetitia also runs a short course for ScreenSkills on Casting and Duty of Care and has recently published her first childrens’ book The Joy Troll.

Carla Francome spent over 20 years as a freelance producer, PD and edit producer. The feather in the cap of her TV career was when a snake poo’d on the table in an episode of Come Dine With me, but she’s also worked on specialist factual series like Channel 4 current affairs, the Netflix series Babies, and a natural history series for Animal Planet. Most recently, she was one of the producers on the hit series for Hulu and Disney Plus, The Ashley Madison Affair, which she helped develop.

Jasmine Dotiwala has over 25 years of experience in front of, and behind the camera, as a head of department, manager, broadcaster, series producer, director, and columnist at brands like Netflix UK, Media Trust, Channel 4 News, MTV International & UK, and more.

As an award-winning, multi-media reporter and producer as well as a reputed D&I specialist, Jasmine curates talent training programmes for both new and mid-career talent across TV production and digital and publishing platforms.

Ian Syder is a former head of production / production executive overseeing large scale natural history and adventure series. He has worked at Netflix, Atlantic Productions and Nutopia making productions for Apple, Amazon, Netflix, BBC, C4, ITV, PBS, Discovery amongst others. Ian has recently left TV production and is now a director of production for Pocket FM and also oversees the production of Dome/Planetarium productions through a personal production company.

How to apply

This session will take place online via Zoom. Click ‘apply now’ at the top of the page and follow the instructions to apply for your place: you must login or register before you are able to complete your application.

If you are no longer able to attend, we ask you to please use the 'decline ticket' function on the right hand side of the page so that we can release your place. Our sessions are often oversubscribed, so we’d like to give other freelancers the opportunity to fill available spots. Thank you for your consideration.

This session is supported by the ScreenSkills Unscripted TV Skills Fund which invests in training for the unscripted workforce thanks to contributions from broadcasters, SVoDs and production companies.

This course would normally cost participants to attend but, thanks to this support, we are able to offer it to you for free. If you fail to attend, we reserve the right to request reimbursement of costs, unless your place can be taken by someone else.