Produced By - Insight #15 - Kelsie Springall: Universal Advice For Students As Well As Business Starters
Episode Date: July 28, 2023Kelsie Springall is a Managing Director and a Producer at Fever Days Productions with 5 years of experience working within the commercial and social video sector. Having managed and edited video proje...cts for Arts Council England, Barnet Council, Middlesex University and more. She is also a BA Film graduate with a specialization in production management. Her passion for film was ignited after participating in the BFI Documentary Programme which was the catalyst that fuelled her enthusiasm to pursue film at university. Along with her friend, she co-founded a video production company whereby she manages the post-production aspects. On top of creating content for their clients they also give back to local communities by teaching others with their educational workshops. Listen to this episode to get inspired by how Kelsie co-founded her production company amid the covid pandemic, get detailed insight into what it is like to run such a company and hear some useful tips for your time at university as well as aspirations to start your own business. Connect with Kelsie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelsie-springall-65128119a/?originalSubdomain=uk Follow Fever Days Productions: https://www.feverdaysproductions.co.uk/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/fever-days-productions/ https://www.instagram.com/feverdaysproductions/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/feverdaysproductions/ https://vimeo.com/feverdaysproductions Episode quotes: “Those are always the most rewarding because you’re doing it for a purpose.” “I like having the pieces of the puzzle and then we try to put it all together and make it make sense.” “I’m a massive yes-man. I love doing as many opportunities as I can and learning from that. So I will try and work on pretty much any video project that comes our way.” “But there's never going to be a point, I think, where we're going to want to stop learning and exploring different routes.” Connect with the podcaster: https://tomasloucky.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/ https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/ https://twitter.com/TomasLoucky Follow the podcast: 🌐 Website: https://produced-by-podcast.com/ 🔗 Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by 💬 Contact: https://produced-by-podcast.com/contact 📷 Instagram: https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw ✉️ Email: podcast.produced.by@gmail.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642 🎙️ About Produced By Podcast: Produced By brings you exciting stories of brave people who set out to build careers in competitive fields despite often challenging circumstances. Whether you are interested in creative industries, personal development or want to have some fun, enter the spotlight along with our guests and get inspired. Listen to people coming from all parts of the world, diverse fields of expertise and different levels of careers. So join us to follow their journeys, learn from life experience and embark on a great adventure. 🤩 If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please, leave a review on your podcast app, subscribe or share it with your friends. You can also send us a message and share any feedback, advice and tips for guests. 📭 Subscribe at https://produced-by-podcast.com/subscribe so that you don't miss out! #producedbypodcast #producedby #enterthespotlight Enjoy! Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLouckyStan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_byNewsletter: https://producednewsletter.substack.com/The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Can you share some tips and advice for someone who wanted to start a company like you did?
Any advice?
Don't do that.
Not to be stressed, no.
Or what would you do differently if you were starting again?
I think my main advice to people who are first starting out in the world of video and film
would to sort of be to create your own opportunities.
I think nowadays a lot of people have the expectation that the perfect opportunity is going to come to them.
But if you have that sort of mentality, you know, you're never really going to sort of land a job.
And with how competitive the industry is, I think freelancers and, you know, videographers and filmmakers,
I feel like they always need to be on the front foot and try to create their own opportunities,
whether that's through like many passion projects or whether that's trying to find a different
path within work experience. I think, you know, there's definitely some ways that you can
create your own opportunities and get yourself out there. I mean, with the rise of like social
media nowadays, even if you put your work out there, it can get seen by absolutely anyone. So
trying to create your opportunities and practice your craft is probably the best advice that I
have really. And some advice when it comes to university? My advice for anyone who's going to
university to study a creative subject would be to make the most of the resources. So obviously
whilst we were at university, we had the opportunity to work with lots of different equipment
that we could hire out and use. So I definitely recommend for anyone who's going to university
to hire out as much as equipment as possible and just tried to get to grips with it and practice
with it because then you'll get a feel of, you know, what sort of role that you want to go into
and whatnot. But yeah, I think another piece advice I have for anyone who's going to university
is to make the most of the people that you're going to surround yourself with
because you never know who you're going to meet and what they can do for you in the future.
So just keep networking, meet as many people as you can and collaborate as much as possible.
Yeah, it is something I heard many times, so there must be some truth to it.
Yeah. I don't want to really.
open any new topic. I was just wondering, is there something you would like to mention or something
I maybe forgot to ask you? I think there's more advice. I'm just trying to think of how best
to word it. You can speak as someone who actually started business, who's surrounding business,
who knows what it's like, knows also the negative things, you know, because maybe probably
people think, you know, I'm my own boss, I've got my own company, it's going to be good, but
I'm sure it's not that easy. Definitely. I think something.
that I wish I knew when I first started out within my video production business is that I sort of
wish I learned how to sell myself sooner. I think, you know, you could be the best videographer,
filmmaker or sound designer in the world, but if you don't know how to sort of like, you know,
sell your services and to sell yourself, then you're not necessarily going to be able to land
clients. So it is that idea of like, there's this saying that, you know, hard work beats talent when
talent doesn't work hard. So it is that idea of just working hard at your craft and trying to
learn how you can sell that. I think that's super valuable because there's so many people that
come out of university who have really great skills, but they're not able to sort of sell that to
employees or clients. So I think learning the business side of film or like how to
pitch your services, how to sort of develop a portfolio, you know, all of the
the logistical side of things is super important just as much as upskilling yourself and sort of
practicing your craft is as well. So would that be like for example developing your portfolio
working on your social media CV cover letter and stuff like that? Yeah I think it would be that and
I think it would also be putting yourself in situations where you probably know you're going to
fail as well. So for example you know getting conversations
with people that are in the industry
or where you want to be, learning from them.
I just, you know, like I said previously,
just creating your own opportunities
to sort of fail and then learn from that.
Yeah, there was this module at third year.
I don't know if you had it film entrepreneurship.
Although people complain about it,
I found it really helpful
because it made me to properly develop,
you know, LinkedIn, website and social media present.
And yeah, I found it really helpful.
Did you have that module as well?
Yeah, we also had that module.
That was one of my favorite modules, mainly because you see the business side of everything
and you see the employability side of everything.
And that's mainly what's going to make you money and how that's going to land you clients.
So that was super valuable.
And I wish that module was expanded on as well because it was so valuable to sort of learn
from people that were in the industry, the business side of things.
Like how much should we charge?
what should the contract look like?
There's so many things that creators look over sometimes,
which is so important.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And it also forced me to actually work on even LinkedIn or something.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't work on it,
but I wouldn't work on it as much as if it wasn't required for the modules.
So I found it definitely very helpful.
Yeah.