How to become a digital content producer: Liam's story

Liam Gharib Eshghi - Digital content producer

So my job mainly is video production, video producing, camera operating, but it also might be creating graphics, it could be recording a podcast and working with audio or it could be little bits of animation. It's generally just promoting promotional materials for live events and also promoting Skiddle themselves.

My career path actually started out back when I was at college. So I left school and joined at Blackburn college and I went on to do music technology and audio production there. From that, I went and joined Blackburn University and I studied Film. Obviously, I picked up so many something skills when I was there like how to use a cameras, editing software and things like that.

From there, I left and got an internship at a local marketing agency in Ribchester. I was like their first in house video guy. There was a little bit of winging it involved in that stage as well, it was all just get the jobs done and learn skills as I was going. From there I got offered a job at The Gate Films in Manchester and they’re a TV production company. So that was amazing for me because it really stepped the level up; I went from producing video in a smaller agency to producing things for like Audi, Jaguar, you know really big clients. And then I went freelancing for a while. Sort of a natural progression, sort of meeting clients and things like that. That was an amazing experience because obviously I learnt so much more on the other side of video, which isn't just making them, it's actually being a producer, the researcher. You know, doing all that side as well.

And then I actually met Rich and he brought me into Skiddle and said I like what you’re doing. We'd love to take you on board here and it just became a dream come true for me because I grew up listening to music, playing in bands and you know loving going to gigs and now people pay me to do it, so it's a dream come true.

I would say the skills required to do my job, definitely a lot of creativity, definitely a lot of enthusiasm and energy because as you can imagine running around to live events it's often busy, noisy, quite chaotic situations, so you need to be able to handle that more as a personal skill, and really keeping up to date with all the current trends that go on as well because it’s always moving forward. So I always try and keep my finger on the pulse, and like the latest trends, and how people are producing and things like that.

The biggest obstacle for me has been just keeping at it, keeping the belief that that dream job will come out of it because a lot of people start off in a career like this, with dreams of maybe working in music videos or going shooting big films and then they actually find that they earn the money shooting corporate videos for dentists or accountants or things like that. All that is happening for a reason, it does all count, the skills you are picking up there will come into play later down the line. Keep positive about what you're doing and if you love it, put your all into it.