Internships with visionOntv
As promised, here is a description.
Has anyone got a better word for it than that? The French word is "stagiaire", which sounds better just for being French.
Anyway, as promised, here is a description of what being a "stagiaire" with visionOntv would look like.
Obviously, it is different from being one of visionOntv's many and highly-valued volunteers. Instead, it is something much more structured. Here are two basic guidelines to help you plan.
The first thing is that interns should define for themselves what they would like to do. We can help with that, but it needs to be something you have decided for yourself.
The second thing is that a lot of your work will be "DIY". While we will provide the tools for a lot of skills, and will help as much as possible, you will be taking responsibility for an area of the project yourself and making it work.
The time: you define it, but it should be long enough for you to gain some genuine skills. We cannot practically deal with, say, two weeks full-time, and it's not valuable for participants. Rather than dipping a toe in the swirling rapids of online media we'd rather you learnt to navigate them properly - better for you, better for visionOntv. We're therefore more interested in a few hours a week over some months. So think about what your stint might realistically be (how many hours a week for how long).
The "DIY" aspect: - We would like volunteers to take responsibility for an area of the project which interests them and try to make it work. It might be taking over a TV channel, programming it and building its views, researching, maybe scripting and producing studio shows for it.
It might be organising a "rapid response unit" to make fast-turnaround templated news reports on things happening in London. It might be broadcasting quality long-form documentaries, negotiating their rights, cutting them up into episodes and scripting and producing studio shows to introduce them.
You could for instance take the headmix channel and find interesting, quirky and critical shows on YouTube and broadcast them. You could also review London shows, exhibitions and gigs yourself and do a studio review show, or find the on-screen talent for such a show and then script and produce it.
These ideas are just a few of the possibilities.
What it is NOT - visionOntv is a cutting edge new media project, giving interns the chance to learn a range of highly transferable skills at the frontiers of what moving image media is becoming. What a visionOntv internship is NOT is a course in documentary making. This you would have do somewhere else. Nor is it mainly focused on the technical skills required for video production, outside of live-edit studio shows.
If you're interested, or have got any further questions, just let us know.
Richard and Hamish
