I recently had the opportunity to interview Jeanette Moffat, who is one of the people in charge of Love Island in addition to being the Head of Production for Lifted Entertainment, a label within ITV. I interviewed her on her experience of working on Love Island, as well as in the television industry as a whole, and I got some very interesting answers!

 

Daisy: What made you want to work on Love Island?

Jeanette: I’ve worked at Lifted Entertainment for about 15 years and I’ve worked on most, if not all of the big name shows that Lifted makes; I’ve worked on things like I’m A Celebrity, The Voice, Dancing On Ice and so this was one that I’d never worked on. It was really high profile, it’s the sort of thing everyone is talking about when it’s on and it’s challenging and exciting so why wouldn’t you want to work on it?

 

Daisy: What does your job consist of doing?

Jeanette: I’m now a head of production, I was a production executive, and I now work across all the shows that Lifted entertainment do. I do all sorts of things - I’m very much involved in the logistics of how things work, like how things cost, how we go about doing and making certain things. It might involve health and safety or welfare, booking of crew, cost reporting, troubleshooting, which is dealing with press inquiries. All sorts, really. My job is less about the actual directing of the show and more about the ‘making it happen’ side of things.

 

Daisy: What is your favourite part of working on Love Island?

Jeanette: No two days are the same. There’s always new and different things to do. I think that’s an amazing part of my job generally, that it’s never the same two days in a row, so you wake up in the morning and you don’t quite know what today’s challenge will be. Obviously, its quite nice to have a trip to Mallorca every so often as well! So there’s lots of good things about it and, like I said, when you have live shows pretty much every single day of the week for eight weeks, there are lots and lots of interesting challenges that come up.

 

Daisy: What advice do you have for people trying to get into the media industry?

Jeanette: I think one of the most important things is a passion for what you do and an enthusiasm. If you show that spark of initiative and passion and just having a real desire to do it (and working hard, obviously), then people will be keen to help you. I also think that there is such a wide variety of roles in the media that you’ll probably find that you have a natural talent and a natural liking for one area or another. Most of the people in my part of the industry start off as a runner, just making tea and dropping packages for people and actually, that’s a really great place to start because you then get exposed to all of the different roles there are, whether that be working the cameras or editing the footage or whatever - there’s all sorts of roles and it can expose you to what you as a person find most interesting. So in short, work out what you’re best at and try to do something that you really enjoy, because you will be doing it for a long time!

 

I thank Jeanette Moffat for her time and her valuable insight into the work that goes on behind the scenes of Love Island, and encourage you to watch it on ITVX for free!