Inside the BBC with BBC Young Reporter: What's it like to work at the Natural History Unit?

My first day at school was spent modelling a Tyrannosaurus rex from a piece of plasticine so I was really keen on modelling and painting from a very, very young age. And if I'm very honest with you, up until a certain point in my life, if I wasn't interested in something then I wasn't any good at it. In fact, I probably didn't even go to the lessons. But at that point my biology teacher at the comprehensive that I was at said "listen, if you want to find your way to university, you'll have to pass your O-levels in order to get to your A-levels to get to your undergraduate degree and overnight I went from Cs to Bs and then onto As.

Meet Bran an eleven-year-old common raven. Absolutely stunning. And as one of the corvid family, the crow family, famed for his intelligence.

So, the devil’s in the detail when it comes to wildlife; a keen eye for detail so that you can understand animal behaviour. I think in terms of the presenting, someone said to me a long time ago: "there are two outlooks; you can either be very confident or you can not give a damn". I probably don't give a damn. I don't mind making mistakes because I think we all make mistakes and by making them I've learned to make fewer. But rest assured that when that little red light comes on, I'm determined to do my very best for all of those people who have worked so very hard to get to that point.

Welcome to Springwatch 2021 and we've come to a brand new location – Wild Ken Hill in Norfolk.

The first thing I would say is get an alarm clock and set it fifteen minutes earlier than you did yesterday and, in that fifteen minutes that you're awake when you were previously lying down, you'll get something done and getting things done is really important. And if you're standing up when everyone else is lying down, you're making progress when they're not.

Now, the other thing you can do is use this or other associated tools to make films. Learn how to communicate with other people. Look at how they communicate between themselves. Analyse that, perhaps critically. Watch movies, watch documentaries. See how they work, see how they make you feel, see how they tell their story and try and use all of those things in a way which is hopefully unique to you and then try it because life's a learning experience. You're never gonna get everything right first time. So, try it and you can try it really easily on these.

One other thing that you must culture is to be someone who everyone wants to work with. You've got to be a pleasure to work with. I wear these polo shirts. You know why I where polo shirts all the time? I quite like a polo shirt, but I don't wear t-shirts on TV because there's nowhere to hook a radio mic. So just by turning up with the polo shirt, I've made the sound man happy.

Learn how to tell stories. We like stories. We don't invariably like lecturers. So don't become a lecturer, become a storyteller. Lead people rather than tell them where to go.

And one top tip is that I always try to get people to a point where they are able to say: "I understand that, I get that". And then, just after they've reached that point, you tell them and they point their finger at the screen and they say: "I knew that, I knew that, you don't have to tell me, I knew that". You do not need to be the smart aleck. You need to be the person that's making someone smarter and that's the difference.

My name's James and I'm a researcher at the BBC Natural History Unit.

The kind of subjects I was into at school were predominantly sciences. I really liked them and that was only until I tried to take them further forward and do them for my A-levels and at which point everything just seemed to get far too difficult and I struggled massively so I actually ended up failing my first year of A-levels, my AS-levels, and had to retake the year and do it again. And then I kind of changed to more creative subjects like Photography was one that I really enjoyed during that time.

At school I think I tried to keep my head down and get work done where I could, but it didn't always reflect that in the results that I got.

I kind of was always really into nature documentaries. It was the kind of thing I watched from childhood, all the way through university and always just thought it looked like a super fun job. So I decided to live it and do it and ended up working as a conservation officer abroad for a while and lived on a small island working with sea turtles, which was super fun and upon coming back from that I kind of thought, well, is there any way of melding that with any form of media experience and see if I can use that to try and get a job at the BBC. And, fortunately, some friends and I had started an online media platform through which we kind of connected with local artists in the city we lived in and I kind of melded that experience in my CV with my field work in conservation and fortunately enough the Natural History Unit decided they liked that and here I am.

So, what does being a researcher involve? It's such a multi-faceted job, it changes every day. Some days I'll be constructing narratives based on the remit of our series and looking for new wildlife stories to tell the world. Part of that will involve having conversations with some of the leading scientists in their fields and what they're studying, trying to learn more about the species and find out how we can really tell that animal's story. And then that can go towards setting up shoots and then if I'm lucky enough, get to go on them as well.

The best thing about working at the NHU is the field work, it's the shoots, it's getting to go to places that people only dream of or that tourists can't access, to get to see things that as a child I only thought I could see on the TV, you know, and getting to live it and be there is a real privilege and it's what gets me up in the morning, it's what makes me love being here.

My biggest tips would be: be able to prove your interest and one of the best ways to do that would be through engaging with any local projects. So, a great place to start would be your local park or you could look conservation projects happening near you which you could search for online if you can. Even an animal rescue centre is a great place to start. You'll meet like-minded people at a place like that, that care about wildlife and the natural world. And it's having those sorts of conversations with people that's really gonna help open doors for you and help you learn where to go from there.

My name's Saharla and I'm production management assistant at the NHU in BBC Studios, Bristol. And what a PMA does, so a production management assistant is someone who works with the production exec., so sorting out their diaries and sort of looking at the day-to-day running of what the production execs are up to. And in addition to that, I'm also outreach coordinator so just working with different organisations in Bristol as well as looking after a producer's diary.

At school, I was the chatterbox. That was the recurring theme in all of my parents’ evenings, and the type of subjects I took was mostly like essay-based subjects. Things like history in my GCSEs. I'd say it was quite a studious student, but I didn't know how to be quiet in lessons and that's something I feel I may have learned when I went to uni. But maybe because you don't have parents’ evening at uni, we'll never know.

While I was at uni, I used to take part in lots of event management. So, whether that be through societies or whether it was through the students’ union. I did a lot of like event curation and then, luckily, a job came up once I finished last year and that's why I'm here today.

So, I typically start at half nine and I finish at half five. So, the main things I do during the day is looking at the diary. Looking at my own diary seeing if I have any important meetings coming up and if I need to prepare for anything. And then making sure I'm keeping my communication lines open with my different managers and seeing if there's anything that I can help out with if I have extra capacity. Not every day is the same. So, some days I may be helping like a different production. So, a few weeks ago I was helping Antiques Roadshow which was very different. So, you never really know what can come up while you're working. You'll get an email and the next week you may be doing something completely different. So, it's always keeping you on your toes and always making sure that keeps it nice and varied, which I really do enjoy.

I'd say skills that you would need to become a production management assistant are things like being really organised. I think another skill that'd be really important in this role is just being quite an adaptable person because not every day's the same. And just being able to adapt to that and creating your own sort of structure. I feel like you need to be a good communicator so just being able to speak like to different types of people and making sure that you've got different communication styles like your managers compared to your colleague, just being able to talk to anyone.

Advice I'd give to someone who's interested in like a career in TV is to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way. It's all just learning about what you like and what you dislike and just learning about who you are as a person by saying yes to different things.And then it'll get you to whatever you want to achieve in the future. You never know where the next door that you open from one opportunity will lead.

I'm Lee Bacon and I'm the head of digital and short form at the Natural History Unit and that means that I'm in charge of running the team that makes all the stuff that goes on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter. So, if you've ever seen anything from "Seven Worlds, One Planet" or come across a funny animal meme, that's likely to be coming out of my team.

So, at school, I actually kind of enjoyed school. I never found it too bad. I did things like, at GCSE I did English and Computing, which kind of weren't that related to what I do, but actually the key one for me was Media Studies. So, I studied at school and I got my GCSEs, moved on to A-levels and did Media Studies like I said and from there I managed to get a place at university studying Film and Television Studies.

So then, after I left university, I moved to London and started working as a runner in a lot of different production companies, a lot of different creative agencies. And so, if you don't know what a runner is, that's basically the most junior person in a team. So, you're responsible for delivering packages, opening post, getting people teas and coffees. If there is a big company where people have breakfast in the morning one of my jobs was to load up all the cereals and, although it's really hard work and you're kind of at the lowest end of the ladder, what you do get is an insight into how these businesses work and just how many people go into making all of this content. So, I managed to work my way up from there and work at various companies before ending up at the BBC where I've managed to work right up to being the head of digital and short form.

So, working in digital and short form in the Natural History Unit, every day's really, really different. So, I could be doing anything from looking at scripts and reviewing edits, to having meetings with Facebook or YouTube, to talking to the producers and exec producers who make the content at the Natural History Unit to find out the best way to support those huge shows with David Attenborough in that are gonna be coming down the line. So, every day's really different, but it's great just to be kind of talking to so many different people and so many different parts of the business.

So one thing I would say is that you might be sitting there thinking that getting a job at the Natural History Unit or the BBC is gonna be impossible. Wherever you may be from you may feel like that's really, really far away. But all kinds of people work here, and I never thought I'd end up at the BBC when I was younger but, actually, you know, there's so many different journeys into the business and so many different ways that you can work here, that it really is for everyone. So, if it is something you're interested in it's definitely an option for you as you get a bit older.

So, if someone wanted to join the BBC in any role, I'd say start thinking about the type of things that you're interested in and the skills you could finesse. So, if you know a little bit of photo editing or a little bit of picture editing, those skills are really, really useful and I think they're only going to become more useful as things go forward. So, putting a bit of practicing into those is really, really helpful. But there's also BBC apprenticeships that can kind of be an early way into the BBC, where you're going to get a really good view of the wider business, so you should definitely keep an eye out for those types of opportunities as well.