Thursday, May 9, 2019
Yet another crazy busy day. Are you shocked?
We started the day with easily the coolest media visit yet at Hearst. Hearst is a magazine publisher that puts out magazines like Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Country Living.
Again, they had a beautiful spread set up for us as well as magazines we could take with us. Then, they gave us a great building tour. My favorite part of that was seeing the video room. It was so small and the backdrops were just large pieces of paper hanging from the wall. With a small space and limited budget, they still make amazing content with just that little office. It’s nice to know that I could potentially set up a little studio like that and create my own high quality content for my portfolio.
Right after the tour we had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion. Our class sat with Editors for the magazines Men’s Health, Harper’s Bazaar, Digital Spy, Women’s Health, Elle UK, and Fashion and Lifestyle.
All of them were so passionate about their different niches. I like being able to see people working in similar fields, but once they find their niche they really blossom.
After that we sat in on presentations from Julian Linley, the business development director for The Nest and Oonagh Brennan the fashion director of Hearst UK. Oonagh talked about the process of executing a fashion shoot. She finds talent, creates outfits, and has photo shoots. I didn’t realize just how involved someone like the fashion director is when producing content.
We ventured out into the rain in order to get to the Good Housekeeping Institute Cookery School. The coolest part of that was going downstairs and seeing the testing rooms. They have a plethora of products ranging from makeup to pots and pans. They workers spend all day testing every claim a company has ever made about a product to see if the product receives the GHI stamp of approval.
I really loved how Verity Mann, the Head of Testing at the Good Housekeeping Institute, said they do business. If a product fails their test, instead of dragging the brand through the mud in the magazine, GHI talks to the company producing the product and says like “Hey your product didn’t work. Is it possible that we received a faulty one or can you change the design so it works.” Then, if the company doesn’t do anything to fix it, GHI just don’t work with the company or say anything about the company.
We wrapped up Hearst just in time for my stomach to start growling. A group of us went to Nandos with totally fulfilled one of middle-school-Maddie’s One Direction fantasies. For those who don’t know, Niall Horan from One Direction constantly talked about Nandos and every American fan was so upset that we didn’t have them in the states. It most definitely kept up with the hype.
Little tangent: I talk so much about food in my blog posts. I guess it’s one of the biggest things about being in a new environment.
Anyway! After food I got to go to the National Art Gallery in London. I didn’t do a very in-depth tour because I only had an hour and a half, but I made the highlights. I love impressionist paintings and they had a people collection of Monet’s and Van Gogh. My favorite painting I saw was “An Allegory of Prudence” painted by Titian. There was something about how seamlessly the faces of the men and animals blended together that just made my heart happy.
The best part of my day was visiting Abbey Road! It took such a long time to get a video of me crossing the street and I also crossed from the wrong side, but it’s fine. I feel so bad for all of the locals trying to drive on this street. People (including myself) get a little too excited and then forget that it’s an actual working road.
I got a picture and then headed over to the Abbey Studio to write my name on the wall outside of it. I join the hundred of signatures from Beatles fans. I felt so bad for Anna having to deal with how excited and nerdy I was about it. Just wait for The Beatles tour in Liverpool. I’m going to lose my mind.
