My name is Becca Fadden and I'm 18, studying Media Professional Studies at JMU.
What has been your interest and experience of media to date?
I've been interested in media since I was young when I used to be fascinated by how TV programmes worked and how they were made. I remember when I was about 5 I went to the Corrie studios and was amazed by all the cameras and equipment. When I went to secondary school, we were never offered Media as an option for GCSE but we learnt about some aspects of it in English and that's when I became more interested, especially when I realised I could do it as a career later on in life.
I asked for a camera for my 12th birthday and just tended to follow family round filming them which I found really fun, but then I lost the charger and tapes so my interest stopped for a while. In the summer of year 11, I began to film little videos on my phone of what my friends and I did each day, and although they were rubbish, it made me realise what I loved -filming and tv.
So when I joined sixth form, I was going to take Media as an option but it wasn't allowed so had to take history which was horrific. When I realised that TV and filming was what I wanted to do, I invested in a new camera and began to make videos for my friends' 18th birthdays, with everyone saying messages to them, answering questions about them, and for one friend, even miming Beatles songs for them.
I then applied for 2 media summer schools at Chester and Hope which made me realise I had made the right choice of course as I enjoyed making a short film there. In the final year of sixth form, I undertook some work experience at 'Red Hot Media' in which I got to shadow professional film makers whilst they were filming and editing. Although I lack experience compared to many in the group as I haven't had the option of studying it previously, I have a huge interest of all media and made an effort to research the area and start to create my own forms of media.
And that's how I got here...
What would you like it to be in future?
In the future I would like my interest to focus on TV because I've always been a big fan of it and how it's made. I don't know much about the media industry yet, and what all the different jobs are so I can't really say what exact position I want. So far, I love the whole production process, from planning to shooting to editing so my options are still wide open. If I worked on a programme like 'The Only Way is Essex' that would be amazing!
What media are you interested in as both consumer and producer?
As a consumer I love TV, films, radio and magazines. I've already said of my ambition to work in TV but I'd love to work in radio or magazines too. I'm forever watching tv, listening to Radio 1 and buy 'Heat' religiously every week. Ideally, if 'Heat' created a TV channel, I think that would actually be my ideal job! My favourite types of TV to watch is either comedy, like 'Miranda' or kind of real life programmes like 'The Only Way is Essex' and 'Made in Chelsea', because it provides an entertaining form of escapism without adding too much tension. As a producer, I'd say I prefer to make more light hearted programmes to cheer people up rather than scare people!
