My professional experience project was inspired by my involvement in the East Asian Film Society. I had been recruited by the society as a part of the writers team, producing material for the society's newsletter Jaded Lense for a period of one year, and consequently for the society's website and for our partner website Cine-Vue as part of the official coverage of the Udine Film Festival in 2010. Having provided articles and reviews on a regular basis, I wanted to re-establish the newsletter, which had been abandoned since the editor Michael Jarvis discontinued his membership, and supplement it with an online version, acting as editor-in-chief for both. In addition to my participation in CUEAFS, I wanted to develop the skills I had acquired during my journalism education and continue writing articles and film reviews regularly, as they had improved through my work for the society under the guidance of founder Spencer Murphy. At the same time, I had the desire of expanding my array of skills to the point of becoming an editor and seeing how things operate from a different aspect.
Unfortunately, the project did not go as planned, as most of the people who had been interested in the writing aspect and had come forward and thus given me a reason to go for this project, failed to deliver any material and display any dedication, as a result of which I had to choose a slightly different path. I created a partnership with Shelly Stevenson for a special Film Review section on her website www.iCov.co.uk in the role of a writer/editor for material related to film and the society's activities. Additionally, I began providing material for the society's website www.cueafs.com on a regular basis, as well as continued working with our partner website www.cine-vue.com.
As a result, my professional experience project moved away from my initial intention to expand my knowledge into the editorial field, and although my writing abilities have vastly improved through regular writing, my editorial capacity however remains unchanged, as there has been insufficient material produced by other members of the society for me to practice on. Additionally, my organisational skills also suffered from the lack of a chain of writers and sub-editors for me to co-ordinate and thus I could not evolve in this aspect either.
Nevertheless, the different changes I had to implement in my project because of the different issues helped me develop my problem-solving skills, as well as my ability to think on my feet and quickly resolve situations, as I was pressured by time and necessity to fulfil my proposed project in an appropriate way. Moreover, it made me aware of the specific requirements for handling the online world, which is intensely dynamic – websites come and go, they change quickly, and the writing 'staff' behind them is hard to pin down, which makes the whole environment very flexible, but also very difficult in terms of scheduling or planning material.
On the one hand, this professional experience helped me settle myself in the idea of film journalism that I had always known I wanted to follow, thus helping me receive more clarity as to the direction of my own future. On the other hand, however, the challenges I faced were mainly due to insufficient logistic-planning, as well as my undeveloped organisational and leadership skills, which will prove difficult obstacles in my professional path. Whereas film writing is fairly straight-forward and thus quite a simple process, a project such as the development of a writing platform depends on more people and it is an incredibly complicated plan, which requires meticulousness.
At the same time, the creation and development of new websites is always a challenge and since it mostly relies on unpaid workers and thus it can be considered generally volunteer-based, it is hard to find enough people who are willing to regularly sacrifice time and efforts for the simple gain of experience and portfolio addition. That being said, I had the original desire of being the editor of an established group of writers, and I was not entirely dedicated to developing a new recruitment process, which was a bad business decision that essentially turned my planned team project into an individual assignment.
This project was an attempt to tackle an essentially unexplored area of my practical work in order to gain invaluable editorial, organisational and leadership skills, which would be necessary in my professional future. Although my main intention and interest is in film journalism, it is a difficult industry and demands a lot more capability than excellent writing skills, especially due to the specifics of the market where essentially most film journalists are freelancers. On the one hand, in the aspect of writing, my skills have tremendously improved from this experience and will continue to improve during the course of the ongoing project, both in the coverage of the Udine Film Festival in May 2011 and in the next academic year. On the other hand, in the aspect of under-developed skills, I failed to practice running a simple organisation and exhibiting leadership skills over a team of writers, which would prove an inevitable challenge when creating a platform or project myself, attempting to recruit and co-ordinate other people. These aspects of my professional persona need to be addressed and thus I will continue my attempts at improving these unpractised skills by becoming a more central member in the East Asian Film Society and assuming the role of recruitment leader for the next academic year, thus engaging in more practice-oriented organisational and leadership exercise.
This professional experience opened my eyes about a lot of practicalities that I had not taken into account for the organisation of what seemed to be a very simple project. I learned a lot in terms of how difficult seemingly easy things sometimes turn out to be. In this sense, I am confident I will be able to approach my next project or idea with sufficient preparation and attention to logistics, and thus become more successful in my individual freelancing. Additionally, although I salvaged the project as much as possible, by transforming it into an individual production in order to rely on my own skills, I became central to the realisation of the project mainly as a writer, not as an editor and leader, as initially planned. Therefore, my original intention of expanding my skills into areas where I lacked confidence and experience was not fulfilled and it will become a challenge in the professional world. However, this professional experience proved an irreplaceable learning exercise in business thinking, and despite lack of practice with view of organisation and leadership, I have expanded my knowledge in this direction.
Additional components:
1. Evidence of professional experience work, worth 20 days or more:
http://whichsoever.blogspot.com/search/label/prof experience
2. Evidence of the planned and drafted continuing professional experience work over the course of Udine Far East Film Festival 2011:
http://whichsoever.blogspot.com/search/label/research
3. An established network of useful contacts, met through this project:
http://whichsoever.blogspot.com/search/label/contact book
4. An updated, improved CV, with more orientation to the desired industry:
http://whichsoever.blogspot.com/search/label/updated cvLabels: 201mc |
