The importance of networking

The picture I randomly found in the net. I'm the 1st on the left in the audience.

 

 

Since I moved to the UK in 2011, I've tried to expand my network.

It is important to keep contacts in this hard industry, the TV and media.

Just realised today the number of seminars and networking events that I have attended in the UK when randomly I found the picture - illustrating this post - of me attending one of that events.

My first one was in Brighton in 2012 a networking event with Shed Media Group. I still think they invited me by mistake as I was just recently had arrived to the country. Anyway, at that Shed Media, I was in a corner looking to people - it was my first networking meeting in my life - then some kind of Guardian Angel (not the newspaper one) come to me and just asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was new in the country and I didn't know anybody on TV industry.

 

He asked me: "Why are you there then? Why aren't you talking with people? You only have this opportunity once in a life time! Now stop talking with me and go talk with the producers!" He just smiled and left me. Wow! Is this a angel?! He was right. I was in my first great opportunity to meet people on the business and in the end I was just in a corner watching them.

 

I know you need courage to do it in your first time. But then I realised all that people at the networking event were there to do exactly that. To meet other people. Because of that guardian angel ( I still don't know who he is) I start my network. And because of that I was invited to be part of a panel to analyse the ideas of some of the Brighton University's Creative Writing students.  Just in a couple of weeks later I was giving advice to creative writing students, sat with Jamie Mathieson (' Dr. Who'; 'Being Human'; 'Dirk Gently') and Huw Penalt-Jones, Chief Executive of De Lane Lea Production Company ('Sherlock Holmes'; 'Harry Potter'; 'X-Men'; 'Sweeny Todd'; 'Wallace and Gromit'; 'Tipping the Velvet'; 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' ).

 

Because of that guardian angel I already met Bafta winners, producers, writers and commissioners. I'm in contact with executives from BBC and ITV, and now it's a matter of time that I will have my chance in the UK.

 

Even with credits, networking is something that you need to keep doing. That keeps you alive and moving forward, even if you don't notice.

 

Here are some of the conferences that I attended only in the last year many of them I had the chance to have a word with:

 

Kristian Smith (BBC Comedy Commissioner) – Salford 2015
Elaine Cameron (Producer, Hartswood, Edge of Heaven, The guilty) – Salford 2015
Phil Mealey (Actor and Writer – Early Doors, The Royle Family) – Salford 2015
Kate Haldane (Agent of PBJ Management) – Salford 2015
Claire McCarthy (producer – Class Dismissed) – Salford 2015
Andy Potter (Writer – Class Dismissed) – Salford 2015
Elliot Kerrigan (Writer – Boy meets girl) – Salford 2015
Rebecca Root ( Actor – Boy meets girl) – Salford 2015
Paul Walker (Director – Boy meets girl) – Salford 2015
Sophie Clarke-Jervoise ( Executive Producer – Boy meets girl) – Salford 2015
Anne Edyvean ( Head BBC Writersroom) – Salford 2015

Kate Rowland (BBC Creative Director) – London 2014
Tony Jordan (By Any Means, Life on Mars, Hustle, Eastenders) – London 2014
Barbara Machin (Waking the Dead, Casualty) – London 2014
Danny Brocklehurst (Accused, Exile, Shameless, Clocking Off) – London 2014
Bryan Elsley (Skins, Dates) – London 2014
Sophie Gardiner (Channel 4 Drama Commissioning Editor) – London2014
Levi David Addai (Youngers, My Murder) – London 2014
Hilary Salmon (BBC Executive Producer, Drama) - London 2014
Chris Aird (Head of Drama, BBC Scotland) – London 2014
Jane Featherstone (Chief Executive Kudos) – London 2014
Pete Bowker (From There to Here, Monroe, Eric & Ernie, Casualty)
Toby Whithouse (Being Human, Doctor Who, No Angels) – London 2014
Danny Brocklehurst (Accused, Exile, Shameless, Clocking Off) – London 2014
 
Charlie Higson – York 2014
Anthony Horowitz – York 2014

Great Books: Into the Woods by John Yorke

 

Hi,

 

Today I bring another good book that should be in your shelf if you want to keep following your dream on a scriptwriting career.

 

 

 

 

"INTO THE WOODS by JOHN YORKE.

 

This is an essential for many reasons. It's fresh and light, easy reading and very informative. To add to all this the author is John Yorke who absolutely knows about the business. John Yorke is a former controller of drama production of the BBC and was the man who found the BBC Writers Academy. I believe this is enough to highlight how good this book should be. Is not only a theoretic person, is someone who have a word in one of the most important TV Channels in the world.

 

John Yorke

 

The author is humble enough to say he's not teaching anything new. I can say he is absolutely right. Until new philosophic theories to come in to the industry, something that is not expected in the next years or even decades, the scriptwriting theory is more or less all sorted. Acts, Characters, Story with all its components, plot points, hooks, etc etc etc... Something that all aspiring scriptwriters are starting to know it from the heart. The point here is that John Yorke explains it in a very fresh understandable way not even worried to mention other authors of scriptwriting books  like Vogler or McKee. It's a kind of "why I need to say it differently if they are right?".

 

I want to mention the page 256 (in my 2013 edition). There is a graphic comparing how different authors  use the same theory. It's interesting that all of them, with slightly nuances, reaffirm the secular structure of the story telling. 

 

If you want a good book to start your own scriptwriting private library, this is the one to have! A pleasant and educational reading. Very inspiring.

 

Absolutely 5 stars.

 

INTO THE WOODS on AMAZON

 

CYA