Lucy Clarke CASE STUDY-JOBS IN MEDIA

To help us with our case study, the class had a visitor called Gemma Nunn who worked on the team of BBC two’s Peaky Blinders. It was Gemma’s job to cast certain roles and make character profiles for the production team and cast, so they understood the programmes characters more and detailed

each characters traits. She also looked into props and costumes for each character to help describe them and

detail them. This helped the programme as the costume and make up may have made the representation of the

characters era more obvious, as peaky blinders in not set in the modern day, meaning Gemma will have had to research

when the programme “Peaky Blinders” was set. She also had a lot of responsibility, as she had to find the

appropriate cast to play the parts of extras, who suit the role.

GEMMA NUNN

Character profiles are a crucial point for any film maker to consider, and just like Gemma, there are set jobs in the media industry to make

character profiles for films and shows. Character profiles are important, as when making a show like peaky blinders, there are many people

working alongside the narrative, who may all have different perceptions of a certain character and people may visualise the characters traits

differently. By having a character profile, which describes the character thoroughly, each person can share the same perception for this character

and the characters traits and characteristics become more clear. This also helps the cast know who how to play the certain character as they

understand their point of view. The character profiles should explain the following, their nationality, characteristics and traits, strengths and weaknesses, costume, history, inner presence and outer presence.

Because of character profiles it can help producers make the characters seem vivid, real, alive. I could consider this as I start to make my short

film.

CHARACTER PROFILES

Gemma Nunn then spoke to us about how she got to do her job she does now. She was an inspiration to us, as she

studied media at our school, then moved to a university in London, to study it further, in which she took part in many work experience placements, with in media, such as on set, doing jobs like fetching equipment and sorting last minute

costumes. She said “this helped me as I first hand witnessed the work that goes behind making all these

television programmes” After this she received the job of working on set for Peaky Blinders to cast certain

people/character roles of extras. She is also put in charge of making the character brief and finding the right person to fit the role and style them. “Looking outside of the box

and having a creative flare lead me to success and not giving up. Hard work and determination pays off in the long

run.”

HOW SHE GOT HERE

We then got the change to individually talk to Gemma and to discuss our short films before we told her our ideas, she told us “as a

producer, you must stick to the codes and conventions to a short film, but challenging these codes could lead to the audience

excitement as it is away from their comfort zone.” this gave me the want to do something different from what I would normally do.

“making a short film is difficult, but the research behind it matters as it develops your understanding of what should be included in a short film” Gemma told us that it was crucial to understand how a

short film differentiates from a normal full length film, as more information needs to be packed into a smaller time gap and there still needs to be a clear narrative structure. Another good piece of advice I received from Gemma, was “audience theory will help you

understand the audience you wish to target your film to. By understanding your audience, you will know what they expect and

appreciate, creating enjoyment as they watch the short film. Also, by researching your audience, you can make your film relate to them

more. This should be done before planning filming as you can research into what audience enjoy which kind of film./narratives.”

“you would want to start distributing questionnaires to different age groups to find your target audience and reading through their

feedback, as they will indicate what narrative structures they like, which helps you decide a genre for your film and could give you

hints as to what to do.”

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