You’re sort of a jack of all trades when it comes to content creation. How did you get started?

JC: Ha, I guess I am a bit of a jack of all trades, which I don’t think is a bad thing these days – as long as you make sure your ability in all of those skill sets is high. It doesn’t work to just do an OK job of multiple things, you have to work hard to be at a really good level of all of them – and I do think you need to know where your real talent lies amongst those roles. For me it’s actually editing I think!

I also think it’s really important to learn and understand multiple parts of video making – by understanding editing I shoot better content, and by understanding production I feel like I make more natural and honest Music Videos when I’m directing. It’s important to always be able to adapt and learn.

My career started with some work experience during a break between my 2nd and 3rd year of university. I was studying Creative Music Tech, learning how to record and produce bands as well as playing instruments, but also a lot of the scientific reasoning behind sonics etc.

I’ll be honest and say I have never had an amazing time in education, never really fulfilled any potential and really struggled to engage and learn, all the way through school and university. My sister-in-law got me a week’s work experience at EMI, the record label in London, where she was working to help out the Audio Visual team who were basically the in-house content team before “content” was a real thing. The head of the team at the time just completely threw me in at the deep end, handed me a camera on the first day to go and shoot with and forced me to learn on the job. Same with editing. By the end of the week I’d shot some footage for a TV special, done sound operating on Robbie Williams’ worldwide comeback interviews, and edited a short team showreel. It really sparked something in me. Before that, I’d never really been interested in filming and had never properly used Final Cut or editing software. Thinking back, I was always really interested in Music Videos and live concert DVDs but I’d just never really realised it was something I could do, let alone be good at.

From that point on I went back to university, took up a film elective, got a First in that, finished my final year and offered to go back to EMI for more unpaid work experience. It was a case of right person, right place and right time, as that boss who had shown such confidence in me decided to leave, and that opened up a temporary paid position for me at the label as a department coordinator – that was nearly 10 years ago now.