Helping bring out science from behind closed doors: Confetti students lend their expertise

My last session on Day 3 of Industry Week was delivered by XL Records’ very own Nick Halkes. Nick initially knew he wanted to be an entertainer, putting on ‘mobile discos” from the age of 12, using generic equipment to entertain his friends. It was from here that he managed to start to build up his equipment and in turn his fan-base. Nick was then opened up to the opportunity to travel, which he embraced with open arms, reaping him the joys of City Life, fulfilled with exciting resources and characters. This made me think about branching out to open …

Sef Naqui, RocNation LBE. “Team Work Makes the Dream Work” Sef is a multi-talented artist manager, A&R man, vocalist and producer, to name a few, and has gained immeasurable experience of the music industry both behind and front stage. Sef owns London Boy Records, which is his own music label, alongside his brother whose networking efforts eventually lead to the dealings with the big man himself – Jay Z, therefore getting them to where they are today . Sef presented hid discussion by giving us a brief encounter of his childhood and influences, dropping some well-known names from the delights …

It’s hard to believe at just nineteen years old, Sean Denny was just starting his career in the music industry and at such a young age, who knew what he could achieve. He started as a temp general assistant at Sony Music and his career continued from that point. Sean has now had 12 years in the music industry but with what can only be described as a Ulrika moment, he might not be where he is today. Sean started out with his love of music and wanted to be a DJ but one idea lead him to his career …

‘Refresh Yourself!’ Day 2 of Industry Week! This morning, I was introduced to three diverse and very knowledgeable characters from the Music Industry. As this was my first music event, I was really excited and anticipated for this session. The guys began the session with introductions, where we got to find out a bit of background info on them. The session was lead by all three, with Spyda, a drum and bass MC, introducing the other two guests first. DJ Phantasy has been in the industry for 23 years and has worked alongside a wide range of big industry names …

“P.S, This will not be a Wombles moment” Day 4 and the event that I have been waiting for with much anticipation finally arrived! It was time to talk to the man behind unquestionably popular music festival, Glastonbury, Mr Michael Eavis! The session started with a compendious clip of David Bowie at Glastonbury in the year 2000, before the main man himself braced the stage. He started off by giving us all his recital of how Glastonbury started and what it was that influenced him to start the venture that has made him the very successful man he is today. …

First impressions – Do you even lift? Well he does… Rob is a very nice guy but looks intimidating because he’s built, less of the man crush and more on to the lecture. It was very good at first I was like wahh? Because he started talking about onion gravy (which made me hungry) and how to make it which was a complete was of my time because I’m not doing a cooking course at west notts I’m doing a gaming course at an awesome college J. Any-who this was meant to be a complete was of my time as …

The second lecture of the day and i find myself sat in front of Andy Davis a Technical Artist working at Rockstar. Andy started by telling us his background, he was into music at first, instead of gaming he was in a band, but when he decided to pack that in he went back to what he was really interested in, which was painting, architecture and 3D art. One of the strange things that he told us was that he wasn’t a big gamer and that he was only looking for a career, which I find kind of odd, but …

With experience in both Indie and triple A development, Rob Yescombe has truly seen it all. Today Rob shared with us his techniques and secrets for creating a well executed games pitch to a developer, using a misleading yet fantastic analogy involving onion gravy. “Today, we’ll be running through making onion gravy” was uttered to the surprise of the audience. He walked us through how you make onion gravy, starting with the planting on onion seeds (ensuring not to neglect the correct soil pH required for onion seed to thrive!) and walking right through to the final steps in cooking. …

Andrew Davis talks about his personal progress in the games industry. I remember when I first heard about Rockstar Games, it was after picking up a copy of the video game title GTA2 better known as Grand Theft Auto 2. I have a lot of fond memories of this title and the rest of the franchise so I was looking forward to hearing what Andrew Davis had to say. Andrew started his guest lecture by talking briefly about what he was going to discuss over the next 2 hours. He began with a slide showing his progression in the games …

On the first day of Industry week the first lecture that was scheduled was a man who had worked on games like Golden Eye, TimeSplinters 1 and 2 and SW:Battlefront 3, this man is Steve Ellis. Steve begins his lecture by telling us how the industry works and his background on working in the gaming industry, he told us that he started programming from an early age, “eight years old” he said was the age he started, the skills he had at such a young age soon escalated and it wasn’t so long after he was in primary school he …

Students at Confetti welcomed a special visitor yesterday in the shape of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. He was in Nottingham looking at how Government City Deal money of £60m could benefit creative businesses and young people. He was taken on a tour of Confetti and the Antenna Creative Business Centre by Confetti Media Group boss Craig Chettle. The Deputy Prime Minister met students on the Games Technology, Music Technology and TV and Film courses and observed their lessons. Head of Further Education Phil Myers commented on the visit: “It’s not every day the Deputy Prime Minister gets to experience …