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Appren­tice­ship at Big Light Pro­duc­tions, Sea­son 3

Every year a gradu­ate of Seri­al Eyes is selec­ted for a three-month payed appren­tice­ship pos­i­tion at the UK branch of Frank Spotnitz’s com­pany. Last year’s lucky win­ner was Ele­onora Ven­inova, who told us about her exper­i­ence in Lon­don, her take-aways and gen­er­al obser­va­tions on the Brit­ish industry. 

The biggest take-away from my appren­tice­ship at Big Light Pro­duc­tions was a deep­er under­stand­ing of how the Brit­ish TV industry works and how a typ­ic­al devel­op­ment pro­cess works in an inter­na­tion­al com­pany. [In my time at Big Light] I got the chance to see how TV series are developed from one-line ideas to full-fledged con­cepts, the dynam­ic between cre­at­ive pro­du­cers, writers and story edit­ors, as well as the pro­cess of pitch­ing con­cepts to broad­casters. Attend­ing the devel­op­ment meet­ings in the com­pany was quite inter­est­ing as these were often focused on ‘proof­ing’ ideas against exist­ing series, cur­rent polit­ic­al and social hap­pen­ings in the world as well as fit­ting them into the demands of broad­casters and stream­ers. [My oth­er tasks] com­prised tra­cing the devel­op­ment and re-writes of one of Big Light’s upcom­ing pro­jects, start­ing from out­lines to sev­er­al ver­sions of the pilot script and series over­view. The pre­cious take-away from [this task] is that giv­ing notes and tak­ing notes will always remain an eso­ter­ic pro­cess for all parties involved, both producers/​broadcasters and writers.