A television production management course, two days in duration, is to be held in Holywood, Co. Down. The course takes place on Friday 28th February and Saturday 1st March. It will held by Waddell Media, a prominent producer of factual, lifestyle and entertainment programming for Ireland, the UK and international markets.
The course will interrogate the role of the factual television production manager, covering topics such as music clearances, legal issues, budgeting, union agreements, contracts, production managers’ responsibilities during a shoot period, archive, health and safety, cost managers and cost reporting, insurance, post production and delivery requirements.
The tutor will be Anne Cafferky, who has acted as a freelance PM and Head of Production for many independent production companies in the UK. Trained in the BBC, for the last two years Anne has been a Production Executive at BSkyB and she regularly tutors at the National Film and Television School.
The training course has been described as being best suited to production co-ordinators as well as acting as a useful refresher to production managers. It would also be of great use to researchers or assistant producers who desire a better understanding of the production process. With a small class size of 8-10, the topics to be covered will be worked through efficiently and with adequate attention being devoted to each participant.
Catherine McDowell of Waddell Media, Office Manager and Assistant to the Managing Director, Janine Waddell, has stated that the course functions primarily ‘to fulfil training needs in Northern Ireland as well as the rest of Ireland.’ She said that ‘the response has been very good so far and we’re hoping that that continues.’
With the course costing £375 plus VAT, Catherine McDowell talked about how people who feel the need to travel to receive adequate trainings, even if it is only as far as the UK, end up paying quite a lot between flights, accommodation and the course costs themselves. She said, ‘we decided to start holding these courses in order to try and keep costs down for people.’
Catherine also commented that, ‘at the minute, this course is not accredited but Northern Ireland Screening are accepting funding applications for the course. We do hope that in the future, we will run accredited courses which again should fulfil a lot of training needs for the industry.’
She has said that she hopes the course ‘will be one of many’ held by Waddell Media, and noted of the company’s future plans: ‘we do hope that we will now continue to run these courses and run a series of courses in other areas, not just in production management… We’ll take feedback from the industry and whatever people seem to need we will try and put a course together that will fulfil the needs as far as training goes.’
For further information, please email catherinemcdowell@waddellmedia.com
