My About me section draft

From creating a new CV the next step to think about was my About me section included on my portfolio. I wanted to keep it short and sweet but explains what I've done and what I hop to achieve, this was however my first attempt and would need some alteration before I decide on my final piece. I want to explain exactly what I've done up to date, but with a brief few paragraphs that keeps the reader interested, and doesn't seem like it would take 20 minutes to read..

‘An Independent filmmaker based in Cambridge/Leeds, originating from a family passion and taken further on to two A-Level college courses of media & film Studies. Once he’d gained the knowledge and excitement of media, university was the next step. He Studied Broadcast media studies at Leeds University and has never thought about chasing a different career path. 
He likes to experiment with filmmaking and believes that you can never stop learning. He always pushes himself as far as possible and has a sick work ethic. He doesn’t turn off. He is a confessed geek and has a great self-taught background.

During his university years he has had the opportunity to explore a wide range of skills and techniques for every area in broadcast. Ranging from editing, cinematography, motion graphics and all the way to live studio broadcasting. He has produced various types of products from documentaries to music videos, and has acquired a few clienteles whilst at uni Producing videos for corporate company’s aswell as nightcl His wide range of influences have all found their way into his work and is trying to learn everyday. ‘

CV Revised

After the lecture and workshop today I realised my C.V needed some drastic changes and was not appropriate or suitable for my type of work or placements i would be applying for. After proof reading my old C.V the sections that needed changing was the first mission statement as well as including a skills part. I would blend them two together and have them in a split paragraph format as the employer should see my skills and what I have to offer straight away. The main task was to change my work experience to previous projects and to show the range of video i can achieve and different types of work i have learnt over the years.

I used some guides in on CV's from the guardian and other sources to help me plan out and think about the right areas to cover, as well as how to layout my CV in the 'correct' way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/12/cv-clinic-film-production

http://career-advice.monster.co.uk/searching-for-jobs/job-advice-by-industry/what-makes-a-good-film-cv/article.aspx

Since going over my resume or CV, I've realised keeping up to date and changing my CV for the type of job I apply for will be crucial in the near future. After going over my first draft with all the correct work experience, I then decided to minimise it even more, as i feel a normal CV should have two pages and should not be a long winded read. I feel I've covered the main points and highlighted as many strong points as possible but a CV can always be improved. I plan to gather more help from tutors or outside help and get my CV proofread or re done after I've had some feedback. The next step to consider is my about me paragraph I feel now after re reading it doesn't sound as perfect as it could be, I'm struggling to find what i really want to say in a brief paragraph, summing up my portfolio and condensing it down is what I'm finding difficult. I think the short bio of yourself is key to showing what type of person you are and could reflect on decisions from employers. I feel Condensing my writing into short but to the point sentences is my next task.

Here is my revised CV

Social Networking

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".

Twitter was created in March 2006 and the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search’s per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and can be described as the SMS of the Internet.  

I Previously owned a twitter account, that I made a couple years ago and have neglected it ever since. This workshop was beneficial to reopen my twitter account and start to give it a fresh and professional look. As I now know when going to apply for jobs or internships, social networking sites may come up in my profile or CV. Now when I want future employers to go for me, I would like to have my twitter as my professional social networking site. After resigning in I deleted all of my previous pointless pages I was 

following and decided to re-do it.

 

After adding pages such as BBC News, Leeds Met etc, I was then ready to change my profile and bio about myself. After re shaping my twitter and following hopefully future employers, I then decided to use the two Twitter tools to help me track my tweets/trends, to keep track of each page. Tweetdeck was great for sub categorizing my timeline to my tweets etc, and was very organized to see whether my page needs changing or friends tweets deleting or those sort of situations you could end up in. And then the other Tweetscoop app I used was beneficial to follow the ‘news’ of twitter and how each page is developing during the day.

Overall social networking is a big part of our social life and is around us everywhere, so it will make me realize of what I should actually be sharing or wanting the public/employers to see.

 

Copyright: Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is a non profit organization  headquartered in the United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses known as creative common licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they need for the benefit of other creators. An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner and the license holder, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is produced by the copyright owner.

It has content that you can freely and legally use, there is a giant pool of CC-licensed creativity available to you. There are hundreds of millions of works from songs and videos to scientific and academic material. The combination of tools and users is a vast and growing digital commons, so much content can be copied, distributed, edited and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. Copyright infringements make it hard legally to copy, paste, edit, source etc. creative commons provides a free, public and standardized infrastructure. The tools on the website give the user a simple standardized way to keep their copyright whilst others may have certain uses of there work.

One way I could easily find creative commons videos or content was searching for the CC logo, on any sort of creative platform, such as Flikr, Flikr has a search bar and options that you can narrow down to strictly Creative commons videos and would have the rights to download, edit, copy etc. and include it in my own work or share it further into the internet world. CC can be used for multiple options on your content, either video, graphics; websites etc. there are various license options that can be used for various content. Overall CC helps you copyright your work and still have it use and seen by everyone and anyone across the web.

After choosing my license i then decided to add it to my recent upload of Set 120, this was part of my other project and can link in with how we wanted to get our videos out on the web. i started by choosing the license that I wanted to include, however Youtube is now a partner with creative commons and can give you the option to a public license, one that everyone can share and use your video. My first upload of the set120 Duke Dumont video was not responding to my creative common license and I could not work out why. After going onto my uploaded videos i could then see a option in the left hand side saying 'copyright notices' once i had uploaded and embedded my creative commons license, the notification of copyright then came up and had third party licensing, I didn't really know what this was at first but once clicking onto it and looking at my license it then told me the third party license was there because of the music that was included over the video. This meant because some of the content was not mine to use I could then not include my creative common license and have it as shared content. After realising this and having no CC or person logo on the end of my video, I then decided to upload an old piece from last year of my horse racing news story, this was because it was all my own content used. After uploading the video and using the creative commons drop down menu in the youtube set up, I was then ready to include it and have my work out in the world to use by anyone. After realising the troubles you can have with copyright and different factors that can lead to problems in the future. It seems a topic no one wants to think about but can be specific and helpful in the long run.

Mind Map & Colour Scheme

My mind map to me is a drawing board for all my ideas and options on my portfolio. I have included all the basic ways for my portfolio, such as Blog, projects about me, these all were my starting points for what content will be included on my portfolio. these were straight forward with types of work that would be included so a list of projects i needed to recover or complete, and the style of tumblr and blog i would be using. I could then start to map out the parts of my portfolio that i had only started to think of such as colour schemes, logos, text. and since creating this mind map i have started to realise that I want to keep my portfolio with a simple look with minimal colours and spaces on the page, however i would also like that retro/vintage look to the text or my logo which would be my name. Overall Mindomo was a really great starting basis to spread out all my ideas and actions going to be taking forward with my portfolio.

Colour Scheme 


From my previous planning and what I had spoke about earlier my next piece of planning was to decide on my colour scheme and theme of my portfolio. After deciding I want to use Squarespace and try to fund my portfolio, i then think my layout and colour scheme should look right for the type of layout. Keeping in mind I want to use quite a simplistic look with maybe a retro feel, such as typography, although a portfolio can always be changed whenever. The step i took to deciding about colour was using adobes kulur website and going through all the right sets of colours that could be my portfolios theme. After going through the set up colour themes and thinking I would rather create my set manually. The two final colour schemes i have picked, one is a purple monochromic set that goes through the purples on the same line, with different grades of dark to light. This I feel would give the retro look I would be going for with text as well as to go with a black or white back drop. The next set of colours were more of a light blue/turquoise set, this was done with the grades feature and would take the nearest shades of blue on the same level as the base colour. I felt the blue would be more complimentary on the black or white back drop, however the purple could be more striking. Now i have my colour schemes laid out I can start to include it to either my Mockflow or start to mix up my template once I have chosen it. The colour ill more likely take forward will be the purple, however everything can change in design.


Purple Monochromic

Blue/Turquoise Gradient

Planning my Portfolio

Since Starting this module, we have been working to create our own personal portfolio to take with us outside of uni and hopefully carry them on to create a very professional site. Since starting we have looked into planning the actual site and how the outline or style it will look like. I know what features i want to include and what work will feature on it. As we've been looking into the more technical and physical side of the portfolio, I havn't actually looked into the core detail. I started to use as many planning tools or sites to help me achieve this. this meant going into more depth or personal touches such as Logo's, Text, Colour scheme etc. all of these parts add up to create my own personal space, this needs to represent myself and my preferences.

Rememberthemilk.com

To start my planning i used remember The Milk, which is a online to do list. This simple form of planning has helped me to set weekly achievable goals and gives me some structure of how i will go about completing this module. The way i broke it down was setting weekly targets that i can possibly achieve if i stay on task. i tried to break it down as simple as possible, with all areas covered such as logo design, gathering footage etc. all of this has helped me to list all the jobs i must carry out. this basic planning platform was simple yet effective to use and was great how you can set dates of completion, or make a task more important than one other. The simpleness to this page was also its downfall as i felt after listing my tasks I needed to talk and discuss about them a bit more to really give me some aim.

Springpad.com

After going from my to do list I Needed to categorise my to do list with more detail and actually research into some of my goals. This was when i decided to use Springpad, after watching a brief tutorial and a few reviews, I decided to take my finding into Sproingpad. Springpad's a great online notebook to use and store all your findings, its simple to use and looks alot like word but in a neat little note book, The way to use it is to basically just store all your notes and finding in a structured and efficiently way. It was easy to include links and pictures and was actually quite a good way to style my own work. It seem to almost be like using a blog but can scroll through page after page, I can keep up to date with my to do list and go into more detail on this site. Using this has come to make me realise what type of typo i want, aswell as start to focus down on which website builder i was going to use, which colours could work well together and so on. Overall both have had a benefit to starting my planning, however i need to put this into action rather than constantly planning.

After using a lot of planning apps and having every task i need to complete this module, I could then start using Springpad and my personal notes to now start using them into my real portfolio and start to think and piece together the exact look and feel on my site. Since a lot of planning has gone into this product, plus I like my products to look exactly how I see it. This means deciding on my portfolio site and after reviewing a few a couple weeks ago, I then decided to look at website builders as a whole. I felt as if the crucial part to this module was choosing a site builder that can achieve everything i have in my notes and can show off my portfolio to the highest standard. One piece of information I found rather helpful was almost a chart for all website builders and said everything they had to offer with simple yes and no answers. As you can see from the chart that most sites vary with each other. However i had narrowed it down to two website builders. One was Wix.com which for my look and feel as well as use comes out at a high level, and the other site being Squarespace.com a very intelligent looking builder with high level of good reviews. Once looking into the two the one I'm more drawn to is Squarespace.com this was down to templates and the feel it had to the website, also after a few video reviews I have seen it just seems the right match to what my notes and Mockflow look like. Squarespace seemed like a sleek and sophisticated website builder with lots of room for customization. With reviews calling it the best for blogs, portfolios sites and designers it just seemed the right website for what I need to achieve. Although theres a cost I'm willing to spend the few dollars to have a respectful portfolio.