Ask Away Thursday is Back!
A few years ago, we launched Ask Away Thursday, an event at the Nowadays office for anyone at the outset of their production career who wanted to ask us anything. Unfortunately, big and unavoidable global events happened and we had to put it on a small hiatus. But now we are back & running them every three months! Find out below when the next one will be.
So, why are we doing this?
Well there’s a few reasons but the main things are a) we’ve been there b) we could have done with some help and c) we’re getting more and more people asking us how they can make progress in the industry.
15 years ago, when Nowadays was in it’s adolescence, we rattled around London, shooting the odd promo here and there with little to zero idea of how to set up a production company and no idea who we could ask without being a right bother. The people we did get to ask questions are still heroes to us.
Today, with the industry being more popular/crowded than ever, we know the competition for jobs is fierce and the routes to success are less and less straightforward. We’d like to do what we can to help start the filmmakers of the future off on the right foot.
What are we offering?
We want to open our doors for a couple of hours to whoever, to share our experience and opinions. If you’re trying to start out in the industry and you have a question, we’ll try and answer it as honestly and helpfully as we can. If you want us to look at your CV, we will. If you’ve got a showreel to watch, we’ll take a look and let you know what we think. If you’ve got ambitions to start your own company, we’ll tell you not to bother (jokes).
At each Ask Away Thursday we’re going to try and have at least three of us around to talk to. Could be one of our producers, an editor, a director, or one of the founders of the company. And with any luck, there’ll be more than one of you, so you can have a natter amongst yourselves and compare battle scars. There might even be a cold beer or two if you’re lucky.
What we aren’t offering is jobs. And we’re not going to commission you to make your next passion-project. We’re not even offering work experience. We’ve got an intern scheme that we’d love people to sign up for but that’s a separate thing you can apply for here if you’re up for it.
Why should you listen to us?
Great question. One thing's for sure, whatever we say shouldn’t be taken as gospel. We’ve muddled our own way to where we are but we’re not sitting here thinking our way of doing things is for everyone. We can’t tell you the one way forward because chances are there are a few thousand and, clichéd as it sounds, that’s your call to make. In fact, every person in our company has got to where they are via completely different routes - some traditional, some not, some meticulously planned, some entirely haphazard.
We’re not even saying we’re the perfect model of a production company (what is that in this day and age anyway?) but we do get paid to make films for real clients and we do employ people to do it and we’ve got better at doing that every single day since we set out.
When’s the next one?
The next one is going to be on 15th February 2024. It will be at our place and probably go on for a couple of hours between 7pm and 9pm. You can follow the link here to register your interest, tickets will go live on the 1st February 2024.
See you soon!
Team Nowadays