The deadline date for all of the units in this 3rd module is just simply 'May' - I have 3 units finished, but all the others are works in progress, and until I see what I come up with as my finished result, there's no point me wittering on about them. (Did I hear a sigh of relief then?).
The only thing I will 'witter' about is one particular unit - street photography - involves me abandoning children, and DH, and jetting off to Paris for 5 days - well, OK, not jetting - spending approximately 9 hours travelling on coach and ferry, is more accurate - but I'm still looking forward to it ! In fact, with a week to go before we leave - I'm all but packed, ready (not that I am eager to go or anything!) and my eldest daughter has kindly provided me with a list of French Phrases that she thinks I might find useful - which (upon reading them) I think indicates that she thinks I swear - a lot !
In the meantime, we also have Creative Futures to deal with - so far we have had two days of lectures, and have a full 4 days of them next week. One of the reasons for this blog is that I am required to analyse and critique these lectures, here, as part of my study, along with any other activity that I am told comes under the heading 'Creative Futures'.
Day 1.
The thing that was drummed into us, during the first day of lectures, is that we have a 1 in 8 chance of full time employment after graduating - so, we had better realise that a lot of us will be self employed and free lancing. A good part of the lectures will be about the legalities and rules and pitfalls that await us in that area.
The first speaker was Trisha Jones - 'Living the Dream'. This lady runs her own mosaic business, started it when she was married with several young children, almost by chance - in renovating an old house, she used end of range tiles, bought cheaply and broken up, to decorate a bathroom. This led to her applying for a P/T post, going into schools and showing the children how to use broken tiles and pottery to create mosaics. This grew into a business where she is involved in producing mosaics for private commissions, exhibitions, schools and communities and garden/outdoor mosaics.
'The Green Man' - one of Trisha's pieces, originally commissioned by a pub of the same name.
Her lecture firstly gave me some confidence - this was a 'more mature' person, who despite the ties of family and a very full life, proved that you can make it in a totally new career, with hard work and determination.
She also showed me that just sheer chance and luck can play a big role - so I had better keep my eyes open for both! She also came up with a list of the benefits of being your own boss - an idea that scares me somewhat, and it was nice to have such a positive outlook on it given.
This was followed by a talk from a young man who's name I did not catch (It would be so nice if ALL these speakers took just a few seconds to state their name clearly, spelling it when necessary - and the spelling bit also applies to them referencing people who's names are not common, and who's spelling the majority are unfamiliar with - the time I've wasted looking for more information on a person who I'd like to research further, but who I can't find 'cos I don't have the right spelling . . . ). This gentleman described how he got his big start by camping in a tent, in a disused quarry for a whole summer, in order to get experience and become involved with a piece of installation art.
Er - yes! I can see my family loving me attempting something like that!
Which is maybe unfair of me, because there are some folk listening to that lecture who would be able to make that sort of commitment in order to get their foot on the ladder, so to speak - but I suspect there are a greater number for whom, like myself, something like that just isn't practical. So if the point of that lecture was to demonstrate one of the ways that you can 'get into' your chosen profession, I'm afraid that it lost me from the start - as did his progression, which involved frequent moves, returns to study, many re-locations - none of which are practicable when you have financial, and family commitments to consider. I guess I just have to accept that some doors are closed because of my situation - I just have to rattle hard at the ones that are open.
I did enjoy some the art work he had been involved in though.
The next Lecture was 'Innovation and Creativity - a Special Relationship', By Dr John Parks, who works for the Welsh Assembly Government.
He covered 'Intellectual Property', comprising of Copyright, design, trademarks and patents. There was a actually a lot of good information in this lecture - I could see how the information on music, recordings and broadcasts applied to the film students, for example, and I did take note of what he had to say there - however, photography is where I still feel I am heading, and it was most off putting when he touched briefly on how copyright affected photography - but then instantly dismissed it as he thought it 'wasn't of any interest to anyone there'. Similarly, in his slides, there was one page that gave information about photography - which he left up for a few seconds, and which he complained about being asked to go back to.
We have been advised to consider and know our audience when we produce work - OK, well, this at least brought that lesson home to me!
It also made me start to look into the issues surrounding intellectual property in greater detail, as it would apply to a photographer - I know now that I have to even be careful photographing certain famous buildings, if I intend to use the resultant images for financial gain. I also have to be aware of brands and logo's featuring in my work - I've just started to touch on that subject now, but I understand that I really need to know more about it.
Day 2 .
I must admit I enjoyed day 2 of the lectures. We kicked off with Sid Madge, from Mad Hen, talking about branding.
I thought I knew what a brand is - and I do, but Sid made me really consider just what goes into successful branding, the impact it can have on a business, how you can use the right sort of branding and approaches to make a real difference to what you do, to the response of customers and your ability to attract them. How branding can be used to instantly create a recognition of your product in the target audience. The creation of and using branding in web sites was, I thought, particularly helpful - in a world where virtually every business/company HAS to have a web site, he showed by examples, how you can use this to link positive attributes to your 'brand' - for example, Innocent Smoothies focus on green issues, on their web page, is an attractive feature to a lot of their customers. I guess whatever career/profession you go into, particularly as its likely to be self employed/free lance based, the information he gave, clearly and in an interesting manner, is something to learn more about and consider.
Next up was Terry Morris - a photographer - of course I enjoyed this lecture !
Terry talked about how he made it to where he is now - maybe because I this is my so far chosen field, I found this incredibly interesting. The main thing I got from this was the importance of confidence and networking, they obviously play a huge roll in being successful. And boy - does Terry have confidence in bags, almost tipping over to arrogance on occasion ! But, I almost think that was the point of this lecture - to really drive home how important it is to have self belief and - well - the sheer cheek and nerve on occasion, to go after what you want. Yes, some of the things he did to get himself to where he is now seem a little out of my reach - I don't have the contacts to persuade Charlotte Church to pose for me, nor do I (at this point) have the £3000 to set up the resultant shoot - but this all made clear the importance of not only confidence, but investment, and even taking chances.
Stoke your Fires
This was one day out of 5 in a week long 'festival', which I was under the impression was about both film and animation. As I've mentioned before on this blog, animation doesn't do anything for me, but I am developing a real interest in film, and I figured today would give me more information about the different roles and potential careers in film, and possible routes into them.
The day kicked off with a selection of award winning short films and animations - two of the live action shorts I found interesting, one of the animations (On the Water) was absolutely beautiful (from my perspective of animation only being of interest as an entertainment form ) - but the rest!
One film featured cannibalism, as a result of conflict leading to a village starving - it was shocking (slightly) and certainly not pleasant to watch (but hey - who said something had to be 'pleasant' to be good?) - but it seemed to me to contain strong similarities to the Thomas Harris book 'Hannibal', and certainly not as well portrayed.
As for 'Birdboy' - yes it was billed as 'experimental' animation - but what on earth was the relevance or entertainment in any of it? It left me confused and with a sneaking suspician that 'Birdboy' wasn't the only one to have had a brush with sniffing illegal substances in order for that to have been created !
After that - which contained no information at all for anyone who might be interested as film as a future career (except perhaps to indicate what not to produce!) - the entire day was devoted just to animation. All the speakers were involved in animation, all the potential careers that were gone into at any length were solely about animation. Revelations about new technology and audience expectations and how to get into the field - were all about animation. Yes the speaker who talked about the making of 'Paul' was very entertaining, and I learned several things - but only about animation.
I really tried to find some way to apply what I had seen and heard to any possible future work I might conceivably be involved with - but I really couldn't. Photography was mentioned briefly - but in such a way that I was left feeling that its a very minor thing in the animation industry, and that absolutely no information about what a photographers role might involve, or how to get into such a role was given - just basically that a photography was involved - but not in what capacity, or any information about it as a career. They touched briefly on the subject of 'skins' - which I know involve a photographer - but the information given there only involved what the animators do with skins - not where they are obtained from, not what's involved with obtaining them, and certainly nothing about how you become a 'photographer' of skins. There was a Q&A session - but from the content of the information they had given, if it wasn't about actual animation, then the questions wouldn't be relevant.
I feel like I have been really negative about Stoke Your Fires - but I found it hard to find any relevance in any of the day, either to photography, or even to be honest, film (unless its animation in film!) - which are the subjects that I am actually studying, it just wasn't relevant to me, and I got absolutely nothing out of it in terms of 'Creative Futures', or otherwise.
Next - Self Directed Study - The Studio.
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