Barrow-In-Furness Blog!

As I was unable to make the first day of being in Barrow, I travelled down to England on the Saturday morning, to a veryy, very early start, leaving the house at 7.30... I mean, who invented that time of the morning?!
I travelled down with Emily Butler, and we arrived at 1.30pm in Barrow-in-Furness. With no time to stop off at our hotel , we travelled straight to The Forum for Brian Gilbert's Directing Masterclass. I helped out by welcoming and handing out leaflets, and surveys to the audience on their way to the auditorium. Then the rest of the interns and I all stayed to watch. We learned about ways to improve acting skills by the director flavouring the performance through advising the actors and giving them several techniques that they could use. This was shown with the acting that was incorporated into the class. We later watched excerpts of "Wilde", one of Gilbert's films and he explained how he got the film to that specific standard. At the Masterclass there was a great variety of age range there, from approximately 13 year old, to around aged 50+, so it definitely appealed to a wide audience. I thought it was interesting, but I didn't think Gilbert was particularly engaging with his audience, and didn't interact much either, which made the Masterclass quite slow paced.
With 30 minutes to find a place for dinner and eat, Rachel, Megan and I ran to the Apollo Cinema where we were to watch a screening of Neil Marshall's short film and "Doomsday", which was absolutely amazing! We enjoyed it a lot, and the SFX was amazing too. But me being myself, had to do at least something cringe-worthy during the day, shouting out about the main actress definitely being Sandra Bullock (Cue Megan, and the guys behind me sniggering and my mistakes). Yeah, maybe you just had to be there!
Afterwards there was an interview with the director Neil Marshall with Emily and Emma stayed behind to watch, while me, Megan and Rachel were brought to a "Networking Party" at the Custom House. I think I need to mention only one name: Russell Peet!! Explains it all really! And we learned one thing while we were there - (and I know Megan's written this is her blog, but it ought to be mentioned twice!) not to drink on the Job! Plenty of dancing, smuggling drinks, and Russell trying to win us over with glasses of wine ensued, before he eventually settled for dancing with my scarf on his head and falling into the lap of his 'boss', the woman who funded his project! Oops!
The following morning consisted of quickly packing, washing and running out the car, our quick breakfast courtesy of Morrisons, who Louise would be thankful for because I think we started to get on her nerves in the morning, after being locked in the corridors with a slightly hungover Russell...
The group separated into three, and me and Megan worked together to sort out paperwork and application forms for the festival and putting them onto electronic copies.
Then, out of the busy blur, the end of the work experience arrived. So much happened during my time in Barrow, but for the short time that I was there I really enjoyed myself, finding that I wanted to stay for even longer! I gave us interns a great taster of what it is like to work at, rather than plan or to attend a festival, and gave us an insight into how busy everything is behind the scenes. I would definitely like to do something like this again, whether it is with the interns and our mentors, or just in the future as it offered us great work experience. If we did something like this again, I would love be part of the organisation of the festival beforehand, as well as working at it, as it would be so exciting to see the festival working out over the week, or the weekend.

Jenni Kelman.
Events Management Intern.