This week our journal task is -
"Using your own personal experience, write a few lines that describe how a personal contact has provided a creative opportunity for you"
I thought of two good examples for this, one more kind of career orientated, and the other just good for the soul. The first came about through a drama course I used to take part in. After working with the people there for several months, one of the guys who ran it told me about a film company called Suited And Booted. He gave me their details, and I applied for a short film course, and ended up making a 90 second film about a woman who lived with a moose. The experience was very educational, and also a lot of fun! (Incidentally, as an example of something getting in the way of a creative opportunity, I was invited to a film festival in Spain after our film apparently won something over there, but couldn't go as it clashed with my GCSE exams....which is lame, haha!)
The second example is just through friends of mine. My mate Jack, who I'd known for several years, asked if I wanted to go for a jam with his mate Dorian, who I didn't really know too well at the time. Jack invited loads of people over, with loads of instruments, and, erm, we didn't really get much done. However, after a few weeks of 'band practice', fewer and fewer people started turning up, until it was just me playing guitar, Dorian on drums and Jack providing the vocals. We recorded hours and hours worth of jams like this (albeit with varying degrees of quality!), and eventually got to play a gig, just by pummelling away on our instruments...which was good fun, and the start of a beautiful friendship! =D
Thursday 30 October 2008
Friday 24 October 2008
Editing Test!
Here's a little test using Premiere Pro to edit together several interviews our group filmed the other day. It's pretty rough around the edges and the sound is all over the place, but, hey, it's only a test!
I found this pretty easy to do, which is a good sign for further editing. I still need to figure out seperating the audio channel from the visual one, so I can use people's answers as voiceovers whilst showing other footage.
I found this pretty easy to do, which is a good sign for further editing. I still need to figure out seperating the audio channel from the visual one, so I can use people's answers as voiceovers whilst showing other footage.
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Networking
For our journals this week, we were asked to comment on Jool’s statement ;
“The essential point of networking is human contact. Business has killed networking by making it something for the career orientated person.”
Personally, I’d disagree with this statement. Whilst networking is obviously an essential part of business, it allows companies to expand their reach and for individuals working in business to find and meet more people, I think networking can exist outside of business altogether and for many more reasons than purely financial gain. For example, during fresher’s week at university, students visit bars, clubs, etc. in order to meet new people and therefore gain more from their experience at university in a new city. This in itself could be called networking, even though it yields no monetary rewards (it’s probably actually quite damaging for the bank account, along with the liver), but it’s a prime opportunity to meet new friends and gain more life experiences. This style of social networking may not be as efficient, precise or structured as the kind employed by a business, but it still works very well and it is used by thousands of people who’d never even think of referring to it as ‘networking’.
Sometimes these more social networks can be born out of business like situations, but even still it’s hard to class them as ‘career orientated’. Take things like thriving underground music cultures, particularly evident in the rave scene, communities of people drawn together out of a passion for music and a desire to stage events for people with a similar outlook. The existence of many successful underground dance events owes everything to a dedicated network, and whilst there may be some nice little earners along the way, this isn’t the main incentive or point to organising such an event. It’s the same for many other diverse interests too, like the booming underground metal scene of the late 80’s, built up by many passionate individuals who circulated and traded tapes they’d made of bands who didn’t always have record company backing (appropriately referred to as the ‘tape-trading’ scene). This wasn’t at all business minded, it would have cost a fresh faced tape trader the price of a tape, envelope and stamp to send their bundle of riffs to another like-minded music fan somewhere else across the globe, with only the promise of someone else’s compilation swinging by their way in the near future to show for it (which sounds worth it to me, to be honest!). This stands as a prime example of a thriving, non-career centred network.
I can fully understand the need for networking within a business environment and the important results it can yield, but I don’t think human contact is necessarily driven by, nor relies on financial gain or the need to further one’s own career.
“The essential point of networking is human contact. Business has killed networking by making it something for the career orientated person.”
Personally, I’d disagree with this statement. Whilst networking is obviously an essential part of business, it allows companies to expand their reach and for individuals working in business to find and meet more people, I think networking can exist outside of business altogether and for many more reasons than purely financial gain. For example, during fresher’s week at university, students visit bars, clubs, etc. in order to meet new people and therefore gain more from their experience at university in a new city. This in itself could be called networking, even though it yields no monetary rewards (it’s probably actually quite damaging for the bank account, along with the liver), but it’s a prime opportunity to meet new friends and gain more life experiences. This style of social networking may not be as efficient, precise or structured as the kind employed by a business, but it still works very well and it is used by thousands of people who’d never even think of referring to it as ‘networking’.
Sometimes these more social networks can be born out of business like situations, but even still it’s hard to class them as ‘career orientated’. Take things like thriving underground music cultures, particularly evident in the rave scene, communities of people drawn together out of a passion for music and a desire to stage events for people with a similar outlook. The existence of many successful underground dance events owes everything to a dedicated network, and whilst there may be some nice little earners along the way, this isn’t the main incentive or point to organising such an event. It’s the same for many other diverse interests too, like the booming underground metal scene of the late 80’s, built up by many passionate individuals who circulated and traded tapes they’d made of bands who didn’t always have record company backing (appropriately referred to as the ‘tape-trading’ scene). This wasn’t at all business minded, it would have cost a fresh faced tape trader the price of a tape, envelope and stamp to send their bundle of riffs to another like-minded music fan somewhere else across the globe, with only the promise of someone else’s compilation swinging by their way in the near future to show for it (which sounds worth it to me, to be honest!). This stands as a prime example of a thriving, non-career centred network.
I can fully understand the need for networking within a business environment and the important results it can yield, but I don’t think human contact is necessarily driven by, nor relies on financial gain or the need to further one’s own career.
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