Over the past six months at Production Attic, a lot of stuff has changed. We’ve seen several new faces in our team, we’ve fully embraced the return to in-person filmmaking with some exciting new clients, we launched a new high-end brand Salt, and we’ve become a lot more active across social media. It’s been an exciting time for us.
One of our new hires was production assistant Skye Hassell, who has really gone the extra mile since arriving in January and now manages our social media channels. Skye has been talking with you all for a few months now but has never been formally introduced, so we’d like to pass you over to them who will make your acquaintance in their own words.
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My interest in film started when I was rather young. My mother tells me that when I was three or four, she explained in very basic terms that films and television shows were created by other people – from then I was hooked! I don’t actually know if this is accurate, but I do remember watching a lot of things growing up, from Doctor Who to Eastenders, to even Countdown.
However, my interest in creating film content really began to emerge when I was in my mid-teens as I began to explore more independent content created online. It was the early days of the Youtube space but even then those content creators made me realise that I wouldn’t need a massive budget, the most fantastic equipment, or an expansive team in order to create things that were insightful, compelling, and intriguing.
From there I began working on discovering more about how it all came together. I was very fortunate to be able to go and see how a small production house near where I grew up operates. I was shown around with a few other kids and got to sit and ask a bunch of questions about how things were put together. Meanwhile, I began to teach myself writing and editing at home, using whatever I had available at the time and began publishing small home movies I made with my friends on Youtube – which are thankfully no longer available for anyone to watch!
I didn’t begin to consider film as a possible career path until the very end of my high school experience, as we were all applying for universities and colleges around the country. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was not only interested in but also good at. I applied to a handful of film courses around the country and eventually found myself moving to Ayr, to join the University of the West of Scotland.
While studying, I was given the opportunity to work on a whole range of different projects and in different roles and found that my passions lay most strongly in writing, directing, and editing – not a huge surprise, since those were the roles I took up as a teenager. After six years of studying (including a gap year where I focused on building up my own brand as a Freelance Content Creator), I emerged with not only a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Screenwriting but a Master’s Degree too.
During my time at the university, I completed a wide range of projects that went on to receive recognition outside of academia. Of all these projects, none are as important to me as Let’s Talk About Joe, a deeply impactful and heart-wrenching documentary about my family and the loss of my older brother. My first time in the directing chair, it went on to win the Best Documentary award at the Woman X Festival and was nominated by the Royal Television Society. But even without its success, it was always going to be a deeply important film that I would treasure forever.
And that continued on into my Master’s – where I took up the reigns of an Editor on every project I worked on, where I managed to work on a few award-winning films, including relieving the Best Editor award from the Europe Film Festival for a Short Documentary I worked on called GORGE.
My work at Production Attic may just be beginning but I’ve already had the chance to work with some amazing clients, and on some amazing projects: helping launch the Salt brand and our collaboration with Sky; on-location filming with the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow; and an exciting collaboration with Skillshare which you’ll see more of very soon! But finally being given the chance to put what I spent years learning into practice is an opportunity that I am so grateful for. The joint roles of production assistant and managing social media means that my work is very varied on a day-to-day basis: I do what I can to keep these pages going, and whatever else is needed to help productions run smoothly.
Outside of my film work, I’m a regular mid 20’s geek honestly. I like cameras and tabletop games. If I was a cartoon character it would be Raven from Teen Titans. I write in my spare time and read far less than I should. But I think like many creatives, I spend most of my free time centred around creating.
Thank you for reading, it’s nice to finally meet you all and I look forward to what we can bring you soon!
