Andy de Emmony
Posted by bugrach on Sat, 28 Feb 2009.
On Tuesday 25th February 2009, Andy visited the HND in Media and National Diploma in Media students at the Media Centre of Excellence to give them a talk about life in the media industry.
Andy started off by studying a degree in sculpture at Loughborough University, which he described as not being a very media friendly course, but following on from this he had a job in a prop making shop, where they created props for many TV and film productions. From here he was then sent off to film school where he did a 6 months, short course in multi camera. Two of his lecturers were also the creators of the programme, Spitting Image.
Through this Andy got to know a lot of script writers and then he went in to working on sitcoms. He started directing Spitting Image at the age of 27 for 10 years, and from then went to work freelance at the BBC doing dramas.
His first drama was ‘At Home with the Braithwaite’s’, where he talked about going up to Leeds, and at the time nobody else was interested in it. Since then, Andy has been working on consistent dramas. Andy then went on to talk to the students about life in the industry, and what to expect. He started off by saying:
“You have to be versatile” TV is now moving on to HD and will soon be a tapeless production. Andy explained that “I don’t prefer it as I like working with tapes”.
He remembers the days of working with 9 GB memory on a Bolex camera, and then from that you would have Sunday afternoon to edit the programme yourself.
A lot of people who work in the media work freelance, and Andy explained that it is very rare to have a full-time job, and it’s difficult to live off a BBC salary. “There is a lot of money to be made in commercials” he said. Commercials pay better, so it’s good to try and dabble with these in between work.
Andy’s son did a media degree a few years ago, and he started off in the industry as a runner, which Andy said was “pretty much the entry level for most people who want to get in to production”. He went on to say that you get paid very little and you are there before most people and after most people, but it’s a good position to be in for you to see what everyone else does, and it’s a way for you to see ‘would I like to do that?’.
In his experience, Andy described a location manager’s job as being one of the worst, as you get a lot of grief from the people who own the location, down to the people who want to change aspects of the location. It’s also long hours too as you are there way before and after everyone else.
We then moved on to post production and editing, where he told us that you spend a lot of time doing it yourself, so it’s good to know the software. In the industry they mainly use a programme called AVID, which is quite easy to pick up on most laptops, and you can do most things that you want to do with it.
Andy then mentioned about being able to use different levels of sound, and spoke about how you can make a lot from a little. He said that iMac is a very good programme to use, and is used a lot in the industry. We were then able to see a lot of Andy’s work, and it was then at this point I realised just how lucky I was to be meeting Andy, and I recognised a lot of his work. Most of which I had watch on the TV most days without even thinking about who has directed them.
Andy has worked on many adverts which include Dolmio, Volvic water, Sugar Puffs with the Honey Monster and Legoland Windsor. Just a couple of his TV productions include Spitting Image, Red Dwarf and Father Ted. His showreel can be seen here:
http://www.loosemoose.net/team_info.php?type=directors&ID=8
It was now question time, and Harvey who is a lecturer at the Media Centre of Excellence wanted Andy to tell us students how important it is to have a show real.
Andy went on to say “there is no money in the budget for title sequences; you have to recycle clips from the programme”. They use to be montages and then a series of clips, and if you produced something that was longer than 3 – 4 minutes, nobody would watch it. Montages became old fashioned, but he said that they seem to be coming back in fashion again as he has seen quite a few on TV recently.
We then went on to learn a known phrase, which was that you have to know how to ‘kill your babies’. As awful as it may sound, it simply means that you need to be prepared to loose the work you like, as it needs to be work that tells the story. You need to keep telling yourself ‘Do I need that bit?’ You have to be hard on yourself to choose the best bits.
Andy then told us about a friend who has created 15 short films, which were ‘bad’, but it would have been more beneficial if he put his time in to making 1 great film, it would be a calling card for more work in TV and Film, but you need to be ruthless about your work.
“It’s very rare that you will be in the room when someone watches your work” said Andy, to which he went on to say about screenplays, and the key part that they play, which means not just playing it to your friends.
David Tennant and Andy have known each other for a long time, and David is involved in a charity regarding sufferers of brain injury, and David worked with Andy to create something that portrayed sufferers. When speaking to people they mentioned about tasks such as making toast being one of the most difficult things, so this is what they based it around. It can be seen here:
http://www.tigeraspect.co.uk/prog.asp?id=635
Caroline, a HND student asked about work experience, as she said what many of us were thinking, which was that we would jump at the opportunity to be able to help out and get involved with Andy. He explained that each department does take on people for work experience, but they receive many CV’s so you need to be specific about which area you want to work in. This was a good question and answer as for me it made me realise what I needed to do when asking for work experience.
As the talk was coming to an end, Harvey a lecturer wanted to ask Andy if he was employed by himself or with another company. Andy explained that he worked freelance, so he works for different production companies, and that not all producers keep the same directors on.
In terms of wages Andy said “the fees are good when you’re being paid, but the gaps in between are hard”.
For me, meeting Andy was one of my highlights of the year so far. He is one of the nicest directors I have spoken to. I was recently in the Czech Republic when a director was not happy to have a student in the room. Andy visits many students to give talks, which just goes to show how down to earth he is.
It was a great opportunity to have more of an insight in to the industry, and I learnt lots of key points on what to expect and what to do in certain situations. I enjoyed listening to Andy, and it was good to hear the story of a director and how he got to where he is today.
For a full list of Andy’s productions, follow the link below to IMDB: