Work Experience: A Day in the Life

Max Courage joined us for a week to learn about all things Flatpack. This year's festival may be over, but he learnt that there's no stopping when next year's fest is in the works!

Even though I started my placement at Flatpack after the actual festival had finished, there was already lots to be done in preparation for next year.

I spent the first part of Monday at Flatpack being shown around the office and meeting everybody, setting up at a desk and then doing some research into different film festivals around the world in order to see what they were putting on.The range of places that these festivals occur really interested me, there were huge international competitions in major cities mixed in with tiny independent festivals from little cities in Europe that I had never even heard of before. After lunch I got to see a play at the Hippodrome, which was very entertaining.

Tuesday was more research and data collecting, as well as a chance to plan my own 30 minute collection of short films for 14-16 year olds. I really enjoyed doing this, I could choose my own theme/s and then find films online that I felt represented them. I was also introduced to some really interesting websites for short films that I didn’t know about before coming. For lunch on Tuesday, everybody brought in food to share and we all ate together, which I really enjoyed and really wasn’t expecting.

Wednesday and Thursday were quite similar, with some more research into festivals and awards and more time for me to work on my film programme. I think that overall my favourite part of this placement was my film show - I was really happy with the shorts I had chosen and felt like it was really representative of the work that Flatpack does.

Overall I really enjoyed my placement. All of the team were really friendly and the office was a really nice place to work, there was always music playing and things to look at when you weren’t working.