Media training days at the barn are delivered with Hilary Jeffs of Jawsmith Training. We supply the studio, the talkback rig and the crew. Hilary runs the session and asks the questions.
Who is in the trainer's chair
Hilary has run Jawsmith since 2006. Before that she was European Media Training Manager at Weber Shandwick and head of broadcast at hblmedia. She has trained Cabinet Ministers and people at Microsoft, Oracle, Coca-Cola, BT, Lloyd's of London and Barclays, and has worked with Ofqual since it was set up.
She is also no stranger to the barn. Hilary devised and hosts Experience, a weekly podcast about the human behaviour behind the news headlines, with her co-host Professor Peter Kinderman. It is recorded in our podcast studio and produced by us, so she knows the room, the crew and the kit.
We're a production studio, not a journalism school, and we'd rather say so plainly. What we bring is a room that behaves like a broadcast. Hilary brings the questions that hurt.
What the studio adds
Ask anyone who has done a live interview what threw them and they rarely say the question. They say they could hear the presenter in one ear on a slight delay, heard themselves a fraction late, and lost the thread of a sentence they had rehearsed forty times. A trainer sitting across a boardroom table can't reproduce that. On the day here you get:
- a real IFB earpiece, with the trainer in another room acting as presenter and producer, cueing and interrupting as a gallery would
- mix-minus set up properly, and deliberately broken for one take so people know what a bad line feels like before it happens live
- three 4K cameras on wide, tight and cutaway, so playback shows the shot an editor would actually have used
- playback on a 55-inch panel within a few minutes: record, watch, discuss, go again
The rig was built for live remote contribution first, which is why the earpiece is real. Hearing the producer in your ear explains why it matters so much.
Four formats, built on repetition
Four formats run here: media training, select committee preparation, crisis simulation, and presentation and executive presence. A standard day runs roughly 9.30 to 4, and four to six people is the practical maximum if everyone is to get real camera time. Every practice interview is recorded and handed over. What happens in a media training day goes through it hour by hour.
What it costs
Each day is quoted per brief, because the trainer's time, the group size and whether you want the best material edited afterwards all move the number. For budgeting, UK market data puts tailored corporate media training at roughly £2,000 to £5,000 +VAT a day. That is the market range, not our rate. How much media training costs breaks it down.
If you already work with a trainer you trust, the studio and rig hire on their own. The details are on the media training page.
If you have a spokesperson with an interview coming up, tell us who and roughly when, and we'll put a day together with Hilary.
More from the Journal
- Before you say yes to a media interview: the questions to ask first
- Source-Connect Pro and EdiPrompt are in: directed ADR from a barn near Chichester
- New at the barn: business, team and actor headshots
- All Journal articles
The picture at the top of this article is an illustration generated to show the set-up. It is not a photograph of a client or of a real job.
Ready when you are
Availability and a firm quote, usually same day. No pressure, no hard sell.
granary.digital · 01243 884993 · studio@granary.digital · The Old Grainstore, Adsdean, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 9DN · Prices exclude VAT unless marked inc VAT