Travel to work can be a trial.....

Hey, my name is Stacey Shuttleworth and I am a media Coordinator for Channel five.

I graduated from Media production at Lincoln Uni in 2007 and as soon as graduation was over I packed up and went travelling around Thailand for a few months working at an animal sanctuary in the Jungle. 

It was the most amazing thing I have ever done. After I had had my fill of mosquitoes, hot weather, crazy storms and ran out of money I came back home to look for a job. Like most graduates I had an idea of what I wanted to do but no idea of how to get there. I knew I wanted to be an editor so I started looking for jobs in post production houses; luckily I landed a job as a runner at post house in London. 

The Post production house that I managed to get a job at did the edits for BBC Panorama, Dispatches and other documentaries so I thought I had hit the jackpot. 

I worked my butt off for 4 months as a runner and found that the job lived up to its name and rep for being a very tough and unappreciated job. I ran up and down so many stairs with tapes, tea, lunches and anything else the Editors, Producers or Directors needed. In my spare time I showed my boss I was interested in moving up and started to train in the Tape Library booking tapes in and out of the building and keeping everything organized. 

After a month of training a I was promoted to the library which was a job I never even knew existed when I left Uni, but I found I was very good at it and enjoyed the job. Not long after I saw a Media Coordinator job come up in another company – I didn’t really know what that was but I thought what the hell I like the sound of it and all I can do is try. 

Amazingly I bagged an interview and dressed to the nines for it. I walked in to find the man sat backwards in a chair in jeans and a cap on backwards looking at me. The interview was great – just like a chat really – and I was offered the job. A few weeks later I started work as a media coordinator for Channel Five Transmission. The job basically involved making sure that all programmes and promos that have been scheduled for Five have been QC’d and ingested ready to play out from file format. 

It takes a lot of communication, organisation and problem solving skills to keep all the programmes on the server and ready for transmission and it’s a job I love but never knew was there. 

Turn round Stacey!

If I had any advice to give it would be know what you want to do but keep your eye open as there is a lot more out there then you see on the surface. Everyone has to start from the bottom and it takes real determination to push through the crap jobs to get to where you want to go so stay at it and try to enjoy it.