My Journey To Sky Production Services – #1: Irene Kelly (Edit Team Leader)

How It Started

What was your first ever job?

My first ever job was as a Tape Op in a music recording studio.

What brought you to Sky?

I was working for TVI Wardour St. as a sound assistant. TVI made promos for Sky when it was a single channel, pre the 1989 launch. Sky offered my TVI boss a role as Head of Audio Dubbing in Osterley and he in turn offered me a junior role a couple of months after Sky launched.

How has your role evolved over the years?

Sky started with two audio suites and just four dubbing mixers. Our work was largely Sport and Promo VOs and continuity. When I got the opportunity to become a Trainee Video Editor, my audio background really helped me gain clients despite my lack of editing experience. I’ve spent most of my working life editing at Sky – the pace of technical development and innovation, year on year, has meant that my job never gets boring. When editors started doing motion graphics work, it opened a whole new world of interesting challenges for me. In my current role as Edit Team Leader, I use all the skills I’ve accumulated over the years.

What were your biggest professional challenges and how did you overcome them?

At the start, the main challenge was a lack of formal training, as I didn’t go to University. I was very lucky to find work at Sky where training on the job was accepted and expected. I have always been motivated to self-train and I’ve had wonderful colleagues as informal mentors, who’ve been generous in sharing their knowledge with me.

Since assuming my manager role, my greatest challenge was working as part of a team. However, taking on development feedback and being willing to adapt and embrace change has allowed me to realise the benefits of teamwork.

How It's Going

What does your day to day work life look like?

I work as part of a team of Edit Managers. We work with Senior Managers, our clients and our teams to ensure business needs, client needs, and people’s needs are all being given proper consideration. My days are full of team meetings, 1-to-1s, viewing content, finding out who’s working on what, as well as making sure our people get development opportunities and recognition. A key part of my role is helping to raise awareness, both within Sky and externally, of what SPS people are capable of.

What’s been your SPS career highlight and why?

Standing at the back of Grasshoppers pub watching the AVA 2020 awards ceremony (SPS content awards), which I helped establish. It was the second year of the AVAs, our first in 2019 was a big achievement but AVA 2020 was a genuine success.

I’ve chosen this as my highlight as it was the result of a huge effort from our AVA task team. It was the moment I realised how rewarding it is to be part of a motivated management team. To have SPS out in force, celebrating the great content we can create, made it a very special event.

What can you see yourself doing next?

More of the same - I love my job. As a manager I focus on recognition and when I’m editing, I focus on motion graphics. Helping to develop and improve motion graphics knowledge across our edit team has been my goal since I became a team leader – it’s an exciting journey which I hope to continue with.

How It Can Be Done

What are your top 3 tips for becoming an Edit Team Leader?

• Learn your craft - editing, motion graphics or edit specific technical knowledge are necessary for the role.

• Mentor people – the skills you need to be a good mentor are very similar to those needed to help develop a team.

• Challenge people intelligently – offer solutions and better ways of doing things rather than just complaining about what doesn’t work.

What would you tell your 16-year-old self?

Start doing Yoga ASAP!