Firstly I should apologise for my late arrival. Due to unfortunate circumstances (namely accidentally throwing my laptop off my kitchen table) now is the first time I’ve been able to sit and reflect on the Future Producer experience so far.

It was evident from the moment I arrived at the first of our many meetings that I was going to be spending time with some diversely talented people, it nice to be working in a group where it feels like everyone has their own experience and ideas to bring to each fresh challenge.

Within our first weekend I was already facing one of my personal challenges in a workshop aimed at improving presentation skills. For me I find it quite difficult to perform formal presentations, to me it feels like talking at people and this one-way discourse makes me anxious and stumble over my words at times. Being thrown in the deep end in this instance proved effective as I soon found my nerves weaken and getting to know the group better also put me at ease. I think I’m improving with every presentation and the skills I learnt in this workshop are really helping me fight a bugbear, which I’ve held on to for far too long.

After initially helping curate the Fresh Flix selection for Watershed’s Encounters short film festival I found a real joy from engaging with the work of filmmakers who were passionate about their craft. For the films selected for screening, new avenues are open and the filmmakers get recognition for their hard work. It was sad to discover the fickle reasons why some great films can’t be selected at times but I held onto the notion that the festival will be celebrating some great films and in a small way I helped that process. When choosing from the projects available to pursue further in the process I decided to stick with the Fresh Flix screening and in the coming weeks will be helping to arrange workshops to pair with the film screening to create and afternoon of entertainment and intrigue for the young people who come to the festival.