Today I wrote my SWOT analysis for how I feel I am now in regards to how I perform in a work place environment:
Initial SWOT analysis
Strength
- Independent worker
- Has leadership qualities
- Can use different editing suites proficiently
- Easy to adapt to situation
Weakness
- Trouble to convey ideas
- Average team player
- Not being organised enough with personal life
Opportunity
- To work on idea suggesting and conveying
- Work more in teams
- Work on self-organisation
Threat
- Dis-organisation in personal life could slip into professional life
- When trying to explain, I may not be understood
To sum up the above points is that: I am good at independent work and can usually figure out problems if left to my own accord; when working in a group I tend to adopt the leadership role; and I can adapt easily to different situations, which makes me quite versatile.
But on the flip side, I tend to not be very organised in any respect and when I try to give my ideas out, I either: Word them incorrectly; or I can't find the right words, so I stick to the bigger picture and fail when minor details have been asked. In order to fix this, I need to work at: conveying my ideas and being able to say what I want to say; and to learn to be organised with daily life and in a work based environment. If I can't fix the organisation, I might ruin a project by losing footage or incorrectly storing in one place and lose my job as a consequence.
Hopefully over my time I can:
- Improve my editing skills
- Become more organised
- Be able to convey my ideas to a group, or even to one person.
9th December 2014:
Today I am 12 weeks on from where I started, and it could be said, I am more wiser. But is that so? Well, if we look at the Post-WBA SWOT analysis, we can figure out from there:
Post-WBA SWOT analysis
Strength
- Independent worker
- Has leadership qualities
- Can use different editing suites proficiently
- Easy to adapt to situation
- Use of intiative
- Good team player
Weakness
- Trouble to convey ideas
- Health problems in the winter
Opportunity
- To work on idea suggesting and conveying
- Work more in teams
Threat
- When trying to explain, I may not be understood
As a reminder, I was supposed to improve: my editing skills; organisation; my ability to convey ideas onto others. But how much of that has actually been met? Let us start from the top with editing skills.
Before starting work placement at Planes TV, I was used to working on shows that had been live mixed where my job was to add graphics, colour balance and correct the audio with estuary TV. Editing with Planes TV got me to edit a feature (approx. 90 mins) DVD with DVD menu for a subject that I wasn't at all familiar with: OO Live Steam. If the reader glances back towards the special post: weeks 5, 6, and 7 to where I spoke about OO Live Steam DVD. From this experience I have learnt how to edit from individual clips for a 60+ minute show, colour balance and correct footage to the best of my ability (I still have a long way to go); and use some of the audio effect tools within Premiere Pro CS6.
For as long as I can remember, I haven't been the best organised person and it is shown in day - to - day life as well as within the work placement. When I worked with Estuary through OTB, it was shown that my organisation wasn't the best with the constant misplacing or call sheets; and scripts. This work placement only encouraged my bad organisation with the attitude of 'place it anywhere' attitude sometimes in the respect of projects and the disorganisation of clip storage (OO Live Steam clips were on several memory cards, External HDD, and computers. However over the time on the placement, it made me realise that being dis-organised is counter productive and when this was realised (Around week 9), I went and bought myself a white shelving unit for home to start organising at home, and hoping it would rub off at work. Which it did as I started to collate all clips into more conveniently placed folders (all footage and projects in same folder. example: AVRO Lancaster footage and project in 'Lancaster arrival and departure').
And finally, being able to convey ideas onto others. This is the deal breaker for the TV and Film industry as every programme, no matter how big or small or how terrible, starts as an idea in someones mind. I found it extremely difficult before work placement to say my ideas to someone else, even if I had spent a long time thinking. I was hoping that over my time on the work placement, that I could be able to get my ideas down onto paper or at least organised in my mind and tell what I think. This wasn't the case however, since as an editor I had to follow what my employer had asked of me and get it done. I had said a few ideas, but I couldn't expand much on them, as before. I feel that I need to spend time working in groups of small people to work on ideas in order to practise idea making.
In reflection onto my time at Planes TV over the past 12 weeks, I felt that the experience was good as I made a DVD, edited a bonus feature (albeit uncredited) on Yeovilton with the Sea Vixen and almost finished AVRO sisters. However, I was thrown into the deep end since I did not know the format and I didn't have a brief to work with at all during any of the projects. I felt this would have been useful, especially as I started not knowing anything to do with the format or how things should be done. At first the easy going 'go with the flow' attitude appealed to me and 'what will be, will be' in regards to the edit.
In future I will ask for a briefing in order to write what Planes are present on a day; the order they appear; and notes in regards to what to look out for on the day. That or ask for a complete brief for the production to make it easier to edit.
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