In this article, the author, a researcher in psychology discusses and analysis five different ways of thinking.
The first way – disciplined
Disciplined way of thinking refers to training to perfect a skill. For instance, when you start doing something, don’t just do it, taking down notes while you are doing it. In this way you can look at and learn from your notes after. There will be a big room for you to improve next time. After few times’ practice, you will become more skilled and confident in whatever you are doing. Practice makes the perfect.
The second way – synthesizing
Imaging that you are making a collage, you take whatever you need from somewhere else to make a whole new thing. It works the same way in business. For a manager, his/her job is to call for synthesis. First of all, the manager needs to know what to be done, then they distribute them to various workers to finish. Also they look back and try to carry out the best future missions.
The third way – creating
It is born from the synthesis of disciplinary perspectives. Creative breakthrough usually happens more on young generation, leaders, creative industry like media, fashion and etc.
The fourth and fifth way – respectful and ethical
When it comes to respect, it refers avoiding stereotyping and caricaturing. Try to understand others from their perspectives additionally. What’s more, learn to trust others and at the same time, earn their trust. When it comes to ethical, identify yourself.
In this article, how to allocate your time in a more wise way to be more effective is addressed.
Reformulating Working Time
We can use some tools to help us manage our time effectively. For instance, the smartphone application, it can track what you have been doing throughout the entire day. According to this, you can make some improvement on your effectiveness. Reducing working hours is the most easy way to get out of time pressure. According to Keynes, the hours of work have been fallen rapidly from 1870 to 1930, and the falling will be continuing.
Work-Life Articulation
With the arriving of digital time, the boundary between work and life is becoming blurry. ‘The traditional time/space of the week and weekend and their characteristic social relations are now porous as people increasingly work, play, consume and interact anywhere, anytime’.
Slow Living in Modern Times
As time going by, the appealing for slow life is gaining. Slow living like cooking and sharing, growing vegetables, riding a bike and walking is fading away from our life. Instead we choose the way of fast living, eat outside, buy fast food, driving and so on.
New Technologies for Emergent Times
The digital world is like a big magic box filled with society, people’s imagination, representation of people themselves on social media. People expresses and represents themselves in new technology, but it is the same narrative.
Nowadays, people feel more stressed than before from time to time. However the feeling of getting rushed sometime can become creative tension. It is the time to take control of more our time out of time.
Reference: Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ch.7.
In this week’s reading, it addressed a lot about mindset. Based on my own experience, mindset is essential, it affects you a lot, and it leads you into different results.
I remember when I first arrive in Australia, two and half years ago from now, I was confused, scared and don’t know what to do at the airport after landing. But now, when I look back, I saw how much I’ve grown. When I choose this major at the first place, I just though it would be interesting, that’s the reason. Now I find it really fine, I’m fine to work in this area after graduation. So I think everyone doesn’t really know who they are, what they want, life is not always like the same you planned. However once you pick something, for me, I agree with the craft man mindset which is to be so good, they can’t ignore you. To do that, you need to devote your time, energy and passion.
Craft man mindset
I’ve been preparing for a dance performance for almost two months, and it is coming soon which is in two days. I can’t believe how much I devoted myself into, how many times I practiced. After so much hard work, it finally paying off. everything is connected, if you apply the same mindset to your work, your hard work will pay off.
Time and quality
Time is another important issue. When I’m doing multiple tasks, uni, internship, dance and part time job, I need a detailed schedule to help me to finish more work in shorter time. Remember time doesn’t equal to quality.
The tape doesn’t lie
Look back your life from time to time. In this way, you can make progresses from you pervious mistakes and you will be surprised about how much you’ve grown.
The passion mindset
Try to think the other way around, what’s your life is bring to you. There are so many things you can be thankful to. But always remember, you need to earn it and the process won’t be essay
Reference: Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.
This article analysed the motivation behind freelancing. By pointing out different categories of freelance, it shows that freelance sometimes can be employees as well. Grey areas exist between them. Some freelancers consider themselves as businessman who runs their own enterprise, at the same time, they are workers themselves. In this way, freelance is actually mirco-enterprise. It also outlines the legal issue of freelance varies from country to country. As self-employed is not exactly freelancer. So there is no legal middle ground between employed and self employed status except considerable overlapping. For instance, in Spain’s 2007 Self-Employed Workers, it says,’ economically dependent self-employed worker’.
To sum up, there are areas of overlapping between real freelancer and employee freelancer. A obvious thing to test this is to see if they are economically independent. However, the overlapping areas push the creative mirco-enterprise to happen.
In this week’s reading, it mainly addressed the borderland between formal and informal media work. It highlights the disadvantage of informal media work, for instance, it can be very insecure, overload and low pay. This is especially common in freelancer and some other media workers who are at the bottom of food chain. The flexibility and exploitation exist at the same time, sometimes the boundaries between these two elements can be very leaky. Based on the experience of an old freelancer named Muise, he suggests that ‘give nothing for free, and discipline yourself to making some system- any system- work for you’ It is very common for media companies to hire professional media workers. In comparison, non-professional workers become contributors. There are no minimum payment standard for them. This low-pay model of freelance writing industry has caused criticism.
According to Toby Miller, labour is the power of all, it produces media and then culture and then humanity. The common and typical labour issue in media industry is unpredictable and insecure aspects of work. The ground-level workers suffer even more. Firm culture workers are not as good as they look like, they are not ‘stars’, rich or successful. In fact, they work for their company to get the basic payment. Sometimes they don’t get credit for their contribution. In the end, we can see a range of ideas developing, conflicting and connecting. Both of inevitability and contingency exist in the capitalist knowledge economies world. So take the chances, there is a liberation for flexibility and informal employment after all.
Reference: Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.
This article describes the typical employers which includes self-employment, freelance. It states that the challenges you might run into in this market, the competition, the changeable market trend and hard-to establishment. As a freelancer, firstly you need to be aware of these potential problems. The paragraph in this article can be a good reminder for us. It also highlights the importance of network in this industry. Be in the freelance industry gives you enough room to develop your own specification. And you can always spend enough time on building it up into your portfolio. It also reminds us about the independence and ability level are required in freelance. What’s more, it points out the consideration we need to take about mange our own finances including tax, VAT and National Insurance contributions. The article provide us with the basic information flow of being a freelancer. It gives us a general sense of what it is like, what need to be considered and prepared before you enter the market.
Freelancer is a part addressed in this journal. It covers a lot more than that. It generally provide all the information in media industry to us. For instance, what kind of work can I do? What’s it like working in this industry? Entry and progression, Where can I find experience? Typical employers, opportunity abroad and future trends. All of these are like a futurism guide for us, the graduates, entering the industry, which is very helpful and worth more further reading and researching.
In this article, certain data points on the trend of freelancers are provided. For instance, ‘independent professionals in the EU grew from 6.2 million in 2004 to 8.9 million in 2013′. In all the industries, creative and digital industries are more active than the others. Next it analysis the freelancer market trend from the perspective of both freelancers and employers. From the perspective of freelancer, to be a freelancer, it is very flexible and inspiring because they get the opportunities to meet different people and agencies, the work can be more active and inspirational for them. At the same time, the multiple contents makes them more trained and skilled. In addition, it’s easier for freelancer to focus on one area and get more developed at specific things when they are self-navigating. What’s more, it mentioned that freelancers’ work trend to be more creative and think out of the box might because of the freedom they are enjoying. From the perspective of the employers, there are a couple of reality reasons for the employers to be fond of freelancers. Firstly, the changing work mode of the agencies, from a retainer to a project-based model. This makes thing less predictable for employers, ‘using something that’s a flexible resource makes a lot of sense’. Secondly, the risks, freelancers can lower the risk of a company in some level over committing on costs. They are very desired when innovating. The paragraphs on both freelancer themselves and employer’s perspective helps a lot on understanding the current freelancer market and its trend in the future. This is helpful for our project, because it gives us the general sense of what we should get out of the freelancer and what the industry is looking from us at the same time.
Global media like E&M landscape is in the form of multi-shifting. ‘At a global level, one of the most significant shifts evident is a reordering of the industry’s sectors’ (Lederer & Brownlow). There are generally five broad groups, Internet, video entertainment, publishing, music, and video games. In overall picture, it is steadily shifting from publish business to video and internet business
Shift 1. Demography: Youth Will Be Served
Younger consumers’ startling ability of multitasks in different media platform has become the biggest selling advantage for E&M markets around the world. Their behaviour helps promote the products in a rapid speed.
Shift 2. Competition: Content Is Still King
with the appearance of new technology and communication platforms, contented was once outdated, becoming a backseat. This makes lots of world’s traditional media suffer, especially the ones based in U.S and Europe. However in an essential overlooked shift, content still is considered to be the dominate factor, ‘content is king’, it will distinguish and expand globally.
Shift 3. Consumption: The Joy of Bundles
To keep a good and steadily increasing media diet is essential. Connecting and selling everything together is the best way to achieve that. For instance, the increase of subscription content in streaming services in E&M market has become a major feature. However it starts with a very low base.
Shift 4. Geography: Growth Markets
Company usually has different strategies and expectations for different developed market. Nevertheless, in a wider picture, company wants to achieve the rapid growth dynamically.
Shift 5. Business Models: Transforming with Trust
The rapid growth of technology and digitisation creates powerful centrifugal force. As a result, it gives opportunity of development in smaller specialist and area. In fact, this potentially promotes the appearance of new business, even new industry.
Reference: Chris Lederer & Megan Brownlow, ‘’A World of Differences’: Special Report: Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2016-2020’. Price Waterhouse Cooper.
All of the development and technologies have been invented through industrial revolution have always been relying on the power of digitisation and information technology. Three clusters are addressed in this process, physical, digital and biological. These three clusters based on and get support from each other in order to make progress.
physical
In physical branch, there are four main streams, they are autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics and new materials. Autonomous vehicles dominates the information without a driver. They are developing into more strong function of transferring messages in the environment. 3D printing is also called additive manufacturing. It produces subjects layer upon layer based on model or drawing. Roberts are used in automotive environment for the most of situation. New material is being created based not he principles of lighter, stronger, recyclable and adaptive way.
digital
The key connection between physical and digital branch is the Internet. Internet provides platforms, products, services, places, etc. People is walking through these paths between technologies and platforms. Digital platforms save people a lot of transaction and friction cost. Individuals are sharing the same asset.
Biological
After long time researching and huge cost has been spending on it, biological realm has arrived a new level. On the other hand, computing power has been helping scientists go on the right trial.
Internet has been playing an essential role in the industry. It connects everything, it makes the communication faster, easier and more effective. It save money and space.
I researched the way to capture a person’s emotion, personality and environment through close up shots and tight framing. AND I got an actor to play myself.
Statement
In my research of capturing emotion, personality and environment on camera, I ask my good friend Phoebe to be my actor, who is playing me in the film. It turns out it is not just a film about me but also about her somehow. In my research, I shot six different ordinary events in daily life. As I said in my proposal, I will emphasize on the actions more than the big picture, it is about capturing details.
My camera coverage are quite limited, they are mostly close up shots with tight framing. During shooting, all I was thinking is to find good, interesting and unique camera angles. For the camera movement, I used a lot of hand held which is more convenient for me to shoot from any angles I want. Hand held is good for motion picture, however when it comes to still image shots, hand held is not a good optional for me. It causes too much shaky which should not be there when it is a still image shot.
Few things about lighting I ran into when shooting. Firstly, always remember to do white balance before shooting. Once you did the white balance, do not take camera out of the place, otherwise you need to do white balance again. Secondly, get the exposure right using the zebra pattern. Thirdly, basic rule of three-point lighting (when you trying to use a DEDO KIT).
The most important one in mise-en-scene, setting. What I shot is a girl’s daily life, the environment around her is very important to express her emotions and personality. Even though my framings are tight, I always try to show some images of the apartment in the background. To enhance the environment and to create the atmosphere, I create some sound track like water boiling in the kitchen, washing machine running in distance, the sound from television and radio, the sound of mumbling and whistling, etc. To make a strong connection between the character and the environment, I made another montage scene of apartment.
Also I learned a lot about cutting and editing. When the lighting and color of the original footages are not right or good enough, a color corrector and grade are always needed. The timing of cutting is significant. For example, the time of cutting in the purse one is perfect, there is no unnecessary actions at all, it is neat and clear. Sometimes we need to cut back and forth to make it more visual for audience like the getting dressed one.
I reflect upon every shooting exercise deeply, here are the links to the reflections.