Creating this portfolio was a challenging and time-consuming process and each section had me exploring aspects that I had previously not thought much about. This ended up being a difficult process as I had to experiment and research into different aspects of making an effective CV as well as other employability aspects such as placements. When going through this I really had to evaluate my professional experience and how I wanted to present each aspect of my experience. I did this by creating a website for my portfolio that goes through each of my experiences, how they were created and why I presented or included each section.
This was difficult to do as I started this project a lot later than I really should have which ended up making this massive project a lot more difficult than it needed to be, this was purely due to my time management skills and if I was to do this project again I would consider how much needed to be done and how much time would need to go into each section, by doing this I would be able to be more organised and therefore I would have better time management skills to be able to complete this portfolio to a better standard.
When doing this portfolio, I focused on different sections and the process behind each one. These included: researching placements, further engagements, examples of other work, creating a CV and Cover Letter, employer exchanges, creating a network map, SWOT analysis and skills audit as well as building the actual website. Each section of these had their own difficulties and I believe if I were to improve upon them, as a collective, I would make each of the posts on the website look more visually appealing by either adding more of a captivating look to them by how I presented the images or by creating/producing more images to go alone sides some of the posts.
Within this project I managed to show an understanding of the main employability skills and present them in a way that demonstrates them all in a clear, detailed, and efficient way and I have gained more experience when it comes to website building and how each set of presenting a website must be developed to draw in a viewer.
One of the main aspects that I would like to work on would be producing more innovated images to captivate the consumer and try to take more time to enhance my skills and look more into further engagements to accomplish this. I believe that even though this portfolio effectively shows the main aspects that were necessary for a viewer or even an employer to see, that this overall website has a lot of work that needs to still be done to make it more effective in presenting my skills. However, despite this I need to keep gaining skills, knowledge and experience using this software to be able to present a more effective and engaging portfolio in the future.
In this page we will present an interview that we conducted with Thomas Lane, an assistant editor that has been working in the production industry for a few years now. Eirini & Freya were participating in this interview and asking the questions to our guest.
Thomas Lane gave us consent to film but did not want us to post the interview publicly, we have respected this and are only showing the lecturer and people involved within this interview the recording, but we decided to create a brief transcript written by the interviewers to demonstrate the idea of what this interview entailed.
Transcript of Thomas Lane Interview:
As Thomas Lane gave us consent to film but did not want us to post the interview publicly, we have respected this and are only showing the lecturer and people involved within this interview the recording, but we decided to create this brief transcript written by the interviewers to demonstrate the idea of what this interview entailed.
We started off this interview with a brief discussion of what is going to take place within this interview.
Eirini: Firstly, we would like to introduce ourselves (Interviewers: Freya Glenton and Eirini Skarmoutsou) and what we are doing and why did we needed this interview to take place. We are doing this for our group project of mapping the production-based industry. We are doing this interview with a person that is within this industry (directed towards Thomas Lane) so you can tell us about how it is in the industry.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what it is you do within this industry?
Thomas Lane: Ok, I am an Assistant Editor. So, I work in editorial, and I have been working in post-production now for…about 15 years. So, a fair amount of time. I started off in television and then eventually moved to film about probably around 8 years ago and I have been working mainly in film… well exclusively in film ever since. So, the main studios I work for tends to be Disney, and Marvel tends to be cropping up more and more these days, so mainly between those two studios however I have done some other bits as well.
Eirini: That’s great. What is it like for you to work in this industry?
Thomas Lane: That’s a good question, its one of those things of sometimes you have good days and sometimes bad, but I do love my job so even though you do get bad you get a lot of job satisfaction out of doing it, today would be a good example that I am working on a project for Marvel and everything that could go wrong did go wrong, so there’s a lot of problem solving involved. However, you also have those days where things goes smoothly and a lot of the time when you see the end product it brings a lot of satisfaction. A lot of it depends on what sort of department you want to go into. Working in film can be live consuming but rewarding.
Eirini: Ok, how much of what you have studied in university has helped you build your career?
Thomas Lane: That’s another good question. I would say is that I basically learnt AVID which was the university’s main editing software at the time and as well as I the fact that I had a degree I think employers looked at that and it told them I was serious about it. I was really look as I applied for one job at the BBC and got the interview, I did not get the job, however through a connect I got another job in the BBC. In terms of learning it helps you build a problem solve but to be honest you learn more once you get into the industry.
Eirini: So, you build up your skills through your job.
Thomas Lane: I learnt more on the job but saying that without the university it helped build problem solving and learning software.
Eirini: What is the most important aspect of your role in the field?
Thomas Lane: I guess as an assistant editor the most important aspect is essentially, so an assistant editor doesn’t really edit at all we do all the preparing and rushes and making sure everything is correct, so the most important thing is checking that everything is correct. So, problem solving is the main aspect of our role.
Eirini: That is interesting, I don’t think people think about the problem-solving aspects as much.
Freya: So, in your opinion, how hard is it to find a job within this field and how hard is it to achieve your goals that you have set for yourself?
Thomas Lane: That’s a difficult question, it depends it could take no time or a long time to get in the industry, the most important thing is to persevere. I initially wanted to get into film but as I didn’t know anyone tv was fine. As this industry is mainly about who you know it allowed me to met people on the job which led to me getting a trainee job in film which I then worked my way up which allowed me to achieve my goals as I am a second assistant editor.
Freya: What advice would you give a second-year uni student going into your field?
Thomas Lane: I’d say go for it, if you’re not afraid of hard work. When you are brought on board as a trainee which is a good time to engage whether you want to be in the film industry or not. So I’d say definitely give it a try.
Freya: The last question, what projects have you worked on and which are your favourites and how have they influenced your career to this day?
Thomas Lane: How long you got? It’s a good question. There are some that I haven’t necessarily enjoyed but I’ve been proud of. So my favourite product was actually Christopher Robin – Disney as I got along with the people I worked with. Perhaps the film I’m most proud of is the French Dispatch it was a demanding film, but the end product is something that I am proud of and I got to met some of the actors which rarely happens within my part of job.
Freya and Eirini: Sounds amazing, so those are the main questions that we had to ask you thank you so much for taking part in this interview.
Within this page we will we will discuss what makes a good successful employee not just in the production industry but more specifically the film industry. Within the production industry you need essential skills to be able to gain a career and experience within specific parts of the industry. What do these include?
Some of the skills that would be needed:
Organised
Attention to detail
Critical thinking
Reliability
Trainability
Listening skills
Analytical and planning skills
Major skills within the film industry:
Within the film industry, especially if you wanted to work in a more major role or career such as Director or Producer, you will need to demonstrate strong leadership skills and show confident communication skills within your chosen career. To work within this industry, you will need to be able to communicate with both the film crew, other behind the scene staff, as well as post/pre-production members involves as well as the people in front of the camera creating these characters. This includes being able communicate clearly what could be improved, what went wrong and what went well. Whilst going into this element of gaining skills you would need to develop clear trust within your staff and being able to understand people’s body language and gain the attraction of large groups of people which will be your staff. This also includes being able to communicate business or promotion to be able to pitch ideas for your writer and to sell the ideas.
TV and film producers plan and manage the business side of creating television programmes and films. There can be many different ways to explore to get into this role.
Some of the jobs this may lead you to down the line:
Producer
Director
Cameraperson
Screenwriter
TV/Film video producer
Media researcher
Production Manager
Media researcher
music producer.
These are only a few jobs that you can gain from having these skills and experiences within the media film industry.
You can get this job through:
A university course
College course
An apprenticeship
Working towards the role
A broadcaster training scheme
Specialist courses run by private training providers
Skills and Knowledge
knowledge of media production and communication
the ability to accept criticism and work well under pressure
knowledge of English language
leadership skills
to be thorough and pay attention to detail
the ability to use your initiative
to be flexible and open to change
the ability to organise your time and workload
to be able to use a computer and the main software packages competently
Film Director
Directors are in charge of overseeing and bringing together all areas of the creative process, making them the most popular of all filmmaker professions and important to the completion of any film. This includes budgeting, conducting meetings with all departments during the planning, execution, and post-production stages of filming, and presenting your vision for the film succinctly and effectively.
Strong communication skills, a fair but firm attitude to giving commands, great time management, and the capacity to handle problems under pressure are all required.While a film production degree can give you a better grasp of what goes into making a film, practical experience will help you build a network of contacts in the industry and improve your filmmaking talents.
Film Producer
A strong head for figures, excellent leadership skills and the ability to makereasoned decisions under pressure to ensure the smooth running of production are what’s needed.Progressing to this senior role as a film producer will require genuine passion and creativity, carrying out work experience and networking at any opportunity. You may have to start in a junior role, such as a runner or programme researcher, to get your foot in the door.
Other film roles
Animator
Concept artist
Production designer
Sound designer
Sound engineer
Special effects technician
VFX artist
Writer
Here are some videos about our topic in this page.https://www.youtube.com/embed/T4COSfbLyrk?feature=oembed
Directing Film and TV. (2018, July 7). 5 Skills A Movie Director Should Have by Choice Skinner. YouTube
Film Making Basics: Everything you need to know in 8 minutes!(2017, February 1). YouTube
Media production industries have been around entertaining and inspiring audiences for centuries. There are a range of different forms of production that has developed and formed throughout time and most of these have developed from print to digital. One of the biggest industries within media is cinematography and film/cinema. If we wanted to gain an understanding of how the film industry works knowing how it begun and developed throughout history is a major part of how to understand more about this creative industry and how to develop the required skills when going into the cinema and cinematography field.
Due to the way the industries have been built overtime using more advanced technology and being in a highly digital era there has become such a wide range of different styles of film and cinematography ranging from horror style tv/film to highly animated style, which Disney and Pixar has thrived off. This has allowed the cinematography field to become so brand as people within a wide range of the entertainment and creative industries rely on some form of cinematography for their jobs, examples that have come into this would be music videos, musicians working for film/tv, actors, editors, and even more including gifs, new networks and social media apps such as TikTok which has become a major platform for the audience themselves to create their own high quality cinematic short clips.
However, even though a lot of industries are now relying and using cinematography to their advantage, the main industry that benefits from how far this field is the film and cinema industries. This includes the companies or streaming services that are involved in making these films become a reality for the consumer.
Film and cinema:
When diving into looking at the history of cinema and film we see that there is a development of the cinematography where film develops from short clips made, by multiple cameras capturing an image multiple times in order to form a moving picture which is how films became a reality. This first moving image was developed and brought to life in the late 1800s and then eventually developed to the first silent movie which is known today as ‘Roundhay Garden Scene’(Cook, History of film) which is also in black and white and then films went on to having audio to eventually colour and then becoming more developed to have elements such as CGI effects and other editing effects to then developing into the expanse fields of companies that you can see today.
As seen within this video (Alex Day, The Evolution Of Cinema (1878 – 2017)) you can clearly see how through the use of popularity of this form of entertainment and through a constant development of the technology and forever changing consumer of the audience we can see there to be a more vast array of styles and genres coming into play as well as a higher quality due to the demand and popularity of the audience throughout the course of the centuries that film has become prevalent.
From old to new:
The film industry has developed from a simple multi-capture of an imagine into this huge wide range of transmedia productions that have been created through forever advancing technology and has spread into this wide array of different genres and tropes.
This is shown with how film developing though technology and popularity though the use of cinemas and companies. This has developed from using kinetograph to the creation of the camera (JLB productions timeline) developing overtime into the technology that is seen today. These two videos are some of the first films produced within the late 1800s where it shows short silent films/clips that are major parts of how film has developed into the industry it is today.
These two videos show how film has gone from simply black and white starting by a design of trying to capture rapid photos to create a moving image to actually having a moving image enough to create short clips and this showing how far film has come since that time period and how industries have come to thrive of the success of this invention, which has allowed millions of people today to become creators or gain a job in parts of the film industry.
(The Stunning Evolution of Color in Film | WIRED – YouTube ) This video shows off how film has changed in both its appearance, technological advances and overall appeal as time goes on and films become more popularised as entertainment.
As a timeline you can see the development of how film has developed as an industry and with its overall production as it is clear to see that throughout time companies and organisations have become more advanced with both its appeal, branding and technology from starting off with a small invention to becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries in all of time. (A very short history of cinema)
As the industry became bigger and companies came out to create a more of a vast amount of films using new techniques and equipment, such as the dolly, they were able to create a range of camera angles, shots and edits that wouldn’t have even thought to be possible back in the 1800s early 1900s.
If we compare the old type of films to now, or simply to trailers that are around today, it shows off an astounding contrast of how the industry alone has evolved to become this massive source of entertainment and creativity.
This trailer is an example that allows us as an audience looking at the industry to see how far the filed has come and how much goes into each new film from the landscape to the quality of the image, especially into everyday cinematic masterpieces.
This has allowed companies within the film industries that have gain masses of success to divert their companies into a huge transmedia industry where they profit off not just the film itself but from the popularity of the different fandoms that they work with and creating this network of platforms which allows the companies with social media and websites to create TV series, merchandise, magazine and be able to broadcast these multi-million pound creations internationally to more audiences or also create international products to provide for this broad audience. A prime example of a streaming company that has gain masses of success through mass media and now has over 200 million subscribers and gains over $24 billion as of 2020 in profit (Netflix Revenue and Usage Statistics) due to both streaming other companies products, both film and tv, and creating their products as well for both international and Hollywood style creations, the one of the most successful product that Netflix has created as of 2021 is: Squid Game | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube
This is a prime example of an international, Korean, series that has manged to become incredibly popularised worldwide. Netflix was an inspiration for other major companies to create their own streaming service, such as Amazon Prime Videos or Disney+.
History and glimpses within the industries:
When looking into the history of film in particular we can also see how the representation of ethnic or minority groups have developed and expanding into a slightly more accepting rate that it is today despite there still being a lack of positive representation in a lot of fields that is needed for change to happen. This is a major part of the history in film as having representation, especially positive representation, is highly important as a lot of people turn to film in order to see characters they can relate to, issues that are happening and developing through time. Within this century representation is highly needed when going into the industry, especially for minorities such as LGBTQIA+ people and POC, this will allow more people within the industry to gain more respects and make the industry a more welcoming place for people. As some minorities such as Black people within the industry have stated ‘Black professionals trying to build and sustain a career in film and TV, the industry has been, by many of their accounts, a relatively unwelcoming workplace.’(Black representation in film and TV, Dunn, J.)
Within the industry itself companies that demonstrates the development of how film history would be Disney and New Line Cinema as they show the difference between a massive and influential company compared to that of a slightly smaller-scale company and what they have been capable of throughout time. To look more into this example, New line cinema is a fairly recent company, founded in the 1967, (Shaye, R. Warner Brothers) that is owned by a bigger company organisation that is more well know called Warner Brothers Studio. This shows how companies stick to their branding for their audience as Warner Brothers is known for more supernatural and sci-fi films, however having New Line Cinema they can reach a target audience within the horror genre and also unit to DC productions they also get to reach a whole other fanbase which allows people who work within this company to experience reaching a large range of fandoms from old fandoms to new. Reaching people who liked old school Daffy Duck to Harry Potter Fans to Batman fans to even lord of the rings fan. Warner Brothers are not the only company who has split productions into owning smaller production companies based of genre as Disney is highly known for this as well as they are a unit with Marvel and others.
This is an important part of film history for both as it shows how your range of skills you need to develop a career within this particular industry has developed and changed throughout time and depending on what part of the industry you go into will depend on which set of skills would need to build to gain a career within these separate fields. For example, if you were to go into the horror side and work with the camera as a person, you’d need to know how to take fast clear shots and close ups, etc, as these elements have been horror tropes which have existed within the genre for decades.
So as history continues to develop so will the film industry and skills within the industry as well. The technology will become even more advanced as time continues and who knows what the film industry has in store within the upcoming century.
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