Personal Development Planner

Background :

My background is based around the lens. My secondary school was fortunate enough to have it's own photography department with fully working darkroom. Both photography and media studies were offered at GCSE level and i have been involved in the creative process ever since. After passing GCSE level i continued both courses into A-Level and achieved what i still think is the best piece of work i have ever done in the 'creative problem solving' module of my photography course, starting with a standard pin-hole camera and transforming it over many months into a pin-hole lens projecting onto slide film in the back of a camera. I did not drop one mark in the examiner's marking and would love to achieve the same at a higher level. In the summer after my first year in multimedia production i applied for work experience at the photography studios Venture in Coventry. As my sister working at the studios i was granted a few months work experience sitting in with clients on the shoots, taking the occasional picture and learning the techniques in photoshop to make everybody look beautiful. It was in this summer a handful of my friends in coventry set up a mixed media arts group called Dialectic. This group was started by a few friends as a way to showcase all of our work. It has been active for four years now and i have always used it as a way to show my work to the public. Both university work and other extracurricular activities. Being involved with creative people has allowed me to work on other projects including a road safety video for coventry city council and countless university projects for my friends. I feel my strengths are photography, cinematography and video editing. However, part of video editing is audio which is one of my weak points. My knowledge of audio has hindered some of my previous work and it has not been as well as it could have with the correct audio.

Transferable Skills :

I have completed the VLP skills record which can be found here

Learning Style :

My learning style record can be found here

Goals :

As i have stated in the previous post, last year i set myself the very basic goal of completely a piece of coursework i would be proud of in months to come. So far, i have discredited 90% of my university work. I feel that as i improve in the area, i am embarrassed by the standard of the previous work. I realise that this is the nature of improvement and as i improve i should see the previous work as a stepping stone to the standard i am at now. I always think that you are not learning 100% until you are actually doing it yourself. First hand. Most of my knowledge has come from 'learning as i go'. Of course, i have done tutorials of the software....etc.... but nothing can prepare you for the first time you are attempting a piece of work without the aid of an american voice guiding you with his mouse to which buttons to click. Going back to the 'learning styles' section, i sometimes wish i could re-shoot entire projects when i'm looking at them in the edit. I think once you start to edit together the piece of work you really see all the pros and cons . This may be a goal in the future, to do full run through, dress rehearsal shoot and film it. So i know exactly what to improve or add in on the actual shoot. Once again, i come back to these two words. 'Time Management'. Another goal is to really do my research on audio. Maybe really get to grips with audacity or soundforge. As mentioned in the post below i also plan to master 'Motion'. The possibilities are endless with this program and could really be the difference between marking classifications at the end of the piece of work. Also, i have recently acquired 'Apple Colour', a colour grading program. I rushed through a few scenes on my client project correcting the colours but if i knew the program better i could have done the whole film. This is another goal i am setting myself before 2008.