Severn Trent Training Video
The Senior Technician at Severn Trent Water asked me to put together a training video for a small team of water technicians.
VT News Package
The brief for this video was to create a TV package based on the environment within your local city, Nottingham. With this in mind, the e-scooter trial seemed a relevant subject matter.
Ackley Bridge: Season 1 Review
All of you 2000 babies will remember Waterloo Road, well Channel 4’s Ackley Bridge is your modern-day equivalent but with a twist. In a Yorkshire town where budgets are running low, two communities who are used to being segregated have had to come together and be integrated into one school. This series follows the journey of a British and Asian community learning to function as one, causing headmistress Mandy Carter (Eastenders Joy Joyner) to deal with the constant problems and explosive fall outs as the students, staff and parents clash due to their cultural differences.
The series first came out on Channel 4 in 2017 but has grown in popularity since being on Netflix in 2020. Writers Malcolm Campbell, who’s also written the likes of hit comedy series Shameless and Ayub Khan Din are themselves from differing cultures which has made the show so authentic and truly representative of these communities and Britain today. It makes you wonder if total integration is possible. What really carries this series is the friendship between Nasreen Paracha (Amy Leigh Hickman) and Missy Booth (Poppy Lee Friar). Despite both being representative of their own communities and going to the same school for the first time ever, their dedication to one another portrays the perfect message to the youth of today. The importance of loyalty and friendship. The pivotal moment of their friendship was when Missy loses somebody very close to her and despite being in an argument, they dropped all the nonsense and was there for one another.
Jordan Wilson (Samuel Bottomely) is the most troubled and challenging child in the school yet brilliantly entertaining. He’s not only the wind-up merchant and class clown but also very pessimistic and loud on his views of the integration – that its futile. The teachers aren’t any better than the kids with Mr Bell (Paul Nicholls), the headmistress’s husband, giving Jordan a right hook to the face! But of course, his wife remained loyal to him…this time. Whilst the heart of the show being these two communities coming together as one, it’s also filled with thought-provoking topics of racism, poverty, sexuality, violence, teen pregnancy and adultery. For a 6-episode season it was all a bit much, too many storylines crammed into 276 minutes and everyone being so closely connected to one another which meant it lost its personalisation and connection with the audience. But I guess that’s what secondary school is like, all over the place!
The Good Place: Episode 1 Review
Michael Schur’s The Good Place, premiered on Netflix in 2017, depicts an absurd, clever and gripping portrayal of the afterlife. Schur, the famous American TV producer has also produced and co-written the likes of the hit comedy series The Office and Brooklyn Nine Nine. The protagonist of the series, Eleanor Shellstrop, played by Gossip Girl actress Kristen Bell, finds herself in a perfectly imperfect notion of heaven after being crushed by a billboard truck advertising erectile dysfunction pills – but has she earnt her place to stay there?
Guiding Eleanor around the village is Michael, played by Ted Danson, the fledging apprentice architect of the good place who is taking on his first (and probably last) project. Chidi Anagonye, a Nigerian philosopher and her apparent soulmate appears to become the closest to Eleanor, but should your ‘soulmate’ be questioning your morality and every move. In this place of eutopia the impossible is possible, it is a structured hyper-reality where you can re-watch your life on earth, swearing is prohibited, you have eternal happiness, there’s a real life talking siri (Janet) and they even translate languages so whoever you’re speaking to understands.
Admission to the good place is solely based on how many good points you can collect whilst alive on earth. So, I warn you, this series will have you questioning yourself and how you’ve behaved throughout your life to determine which version of the afterlife you would enter. As the episode goes on, Eleanor becomes a rift in perfection as she becomes the black sheep of the good place, causing cracks to show and flaws to what appears to be perfect. She has a secret. She was not a saintly person deserving of The Good Place and has put her soul mate Chidi in a predicament with a huge decision to make, does he protect her and make her his ethical guinea pig – or out her to the neighbourhood?
The brilliance of this programme is that it upends everything viewers think they know about the world and the traditional view of ‘heaven’ as believed on earth, whilst also making perfect sense. A very original and clever depiction of the afterlife, making it surprisingly addictive. If you’re thinking this all sounds crazy and not your cup of tea, rethink! Believe me, I thought the same, but it actually entertained the fork out of me.
After Life: Episode 1 Review
Have you ever seen a grown man call a young child a tubby little ginger c*** whilst in the school playground? No? Well in Ricky Gervais’ Netflix sensation, Afterlife, this is just part of every-day life and his characters attitude towards the world.
The British comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director is not only the writer and creator of this series but also plays the main character Tony, in which you see similarities to Ricky himself. Within the first few minutes of the episode, you’re instantly hit with the emotional connection to cancer as it’s clear Tony has sadly lost his wife (Kerry Godliman) to the illness and he now exists mourning her with a cynical, carefree outlook on life. If he’s not drinking alcohol or watching the video diaries of advice his late wife left for him, he’s working at The Tambury Gazette, the local newspaper ran by his brother in-law Matt (Tom Basden) and constantly tormenting his colleagues.
Tony is very straight to the point and doesn’t think twice about what he says or who it affects, including repeated threats of suicide. He is always pushing the boundaries with people to see how much of his nonsense they can take. Whilst slyly knowing he can get away with it as everyone pity’s him and his loss. The topic of suicide may be triggering to some viewers, but this storyline is realistic and a positive movement in representing men’s mental health on people’s screens. The adorable connection between him and his dog is the only reason he hasn’t ended his life, as he says to the doggo “If you could open a tin, I’d be dead by now”.
The living nightmare continues when he visits his dementia suffering dad in a care home, who was extremely fond of Lisa. Each time he asks Tony to bring her along or asks where she is, it’s a knife to the heart. There is a central theme and message throughout that life is too short and although it may not seem like it, to always choose kindness. Despite this review making it seem so, this episode isn’t all doom and gloom and the lighter moments are essential for it not to be totally depressing. The way Gervais injects humour into such a serious subject matter is so well thought out, making this programme a one of one replica and not to mention hilariously entertaining.
Three wedding dates in one year: how the Corona Virus has devastated the wedding industry
One of the hardest hit industries during the coronavirus pandemic has been the wedding industry. Weddings in the UK were banned when the national lockdown began on 23 March, affecting 73,600 weddings and civil partnership ceremonies.
Jono Way and his fiancé Charlie Ellen have had to change their wedding date three times due to the coronavirus interrupting their plans.
The pair were due to tie the knot on the 10th of April 2020 and postponed the date to take place at the end of July this year. However, their postponed date also got cancelled and they rearranged their big day for April 2021 – a whole year later than their original wedding date.
Despite the pair thinking there ‘wouldn’t be any issues with booking a year later’, that date has also now been cancelled; leaving them questioning when their wedding can and will take place.
Above: Jono Way and fiance Charlie Ellen just engaged in 2018
The virus has not only affected their wedding day but also their honeymoon and all the commodities they booked in advance to their wedding such as a photographer, a band, florist and evening entertainment.
Losing their photographer set them back ‘a few hundred pound’ but they felt ‘in the grand scheme of things at the time it didn’t seem too important but obviously now we’re back to square one where we have to ring around everyone and book them for our new date’.
Hayley Goodier, a wedding planner at local wedding venue Swancar Farm Country House states ‘90% of couples have postponed their weddings with a select few remaining with their original date – but of course with the restriction of 15 people’.
Swancar have also lost a few couples due to multiple reasons including the furlough scheme, meaning money just isn’t there for a wedding, some couples have split up, some have re-thought the importance of a wedding and some want to go ahead with the 15 people wedding, but Swancar is too big to accommodate this.
Swancar Farm Country House
When the first national lockdown began to ease up, the number of guests allowed at a wedding was 30 people. The corona virus cases then began to rise again which led to tighter restrictions of 15 guests per wedding. With the national lockdown striking again, no weddings can go ahead at this current moment in time.
The couple said ‘we personally think the government and Boris haven’t given enough updates for weddings. It’s all been for the bigger picture for everything else and they’ve never really discussed weddings or parties.
Hayley agrees with this statement and believes ‘there’s been a lack of information, it’s been very hard to find out what we can and can’t do. We’re potentially looking at a whole year before we can do anything again’.
Swancar farm as a hospitality business will face long term effects of the virus and will take a long time to get back to normality of operating freely and to full capacity.
However, wedding planner Hayley does see a light at the end of the tunnel as the new development of vaccines alongside the end of the national lockdown approaching keeps her hopeful.
As soon as they can go ahead, weddings are going to increase dramatically due to the backlog that has built up. Which will have a knock-on effect of putting pressure onto the businesses to operate business as usual, despite a loss to their workforce.
The wedding planner revealed ‘It has massively affected the workforce; we have lost some members of staff. We’ve tried our best to keep everybody employed but with no work and no income coming in there just isn’t the money there to be paying out wages.’.
There is also still the worry of people being anxious and wary of mixing with groups of big people again, even once the weddings have got the green light to go ahead again.
The wedding industry is set to lose an estimated £87.5 billion in revenue as UK’s lockdown and public gathering limitations has meant a wedding in the foreseeable future is near impossible.
HS2 Newswriting Article
This news article was written during my first year of university in December 2018. I had to interview a local person from my home town with an interesting story. I chose to focus my article on the controversial issue of the building of the new high speed train connecting the midlands to London.
Multi-media News Feature
This multi-media project consists of a video and a news article based on the care options available to the elderly and one individuals story on the struggles faced to receive care, including a carers personal opinions.
Beth Howes 