Kylee Pena
Forum Replies Created
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I’m not an employer, but I’m a young editor that has had side projects happening during a 9-5 job so you might find my perspective interesting.
I would not go to work for most employers that had any policy that said I couldn’t keep up side work, if that’s what you’re considering. Besides being a financial necessity sometimes, it’s just a creative outlet to try new things, learn more stuff, and make something you really like. At my previous job, it helped keep me sane and motivated for an employer that otherwise did not try to engage my skills. Sometimes if your employees are waning, it can be a reflection of yor management. Not always, but sometimes.
I think that side work is good and if you’re a good employer it will pay off for you. As long is there is no conflict of interest, of course. But like anything else, if it affects job performance, it’s an issue and should be treated like any other job distraction issue.
Most young editors I know have had to fight really hard to make work happen on their own. It’s not that they don’t want to be bitched at by a boss or they’re lacking work ethic. They’ve just gotten into the habit of being very busy to pay their bills.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
.stl files are plain text or rich text, right? Could you open the file in TextEdit and do a find/replace all with the settings you want to change?
For example, if you want to change the font from Arial to Helvetica, you could do find “Arial” and replace with “Helvetica”. Or to change the font size, find “$FontSize = 65” and replace with “$FontSize = 45”. Stuff like that.
You could do a more complex find and replace if you have a whole series of adjustments to make.
I haven’t actually done this, but I’ve done a similar thing for changing the color on a bunch of text in an XML file. So please report back if I’m totally wrong.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
I’ve done this exact scenario (same deck and all) exactly 6 times. The only issues were either with the deck or user error (such as the kona being set to output the wrong thing and Premiere being told to match the control panel instead of the sequence settings, duh – though that caused the deck to freak rather than the software.) Otherwise, worked perfectly. Almost too perfectly. Creepy perfect.
Also, whem I was trying to troubleshoot last week before the issue was figured to be deck-related, I did update the AJA drivers to whatever the latest legacy ones for the kona 3 were and everything still works perfectly.
So that probably doesn’t exactly help, but no you aren’t necessarily wasting your time.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
I was in a similar situation and asked a friend at my local PBS station if I could pop in for a late evening or two in exchange for a credit on the film. They said sure, no problem, because I wasn’t making money on it.
So possible solution: have friends with expensive toys or access to them.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
We sound pretty similar. I took a generalist kind of job right out of college doing marketing videos within a company, and I like staff over freelance for the same reasons. I recently left that job for an editor position, which was the job I wanted and skillset I focused most on.
The things I’ve found that suffered the most in my time being a generalist in the corporate world aren’t terribly specific. It’s just different — a different set of needs. Like, I never needed to know broadcast specs when I was working exclusively for the web. But I still had an understanding of them. So I think that’s important: not closing yourself off from learning things that may not be relevant right this moment.
It is easy to settle for lower quality work when you aren’t surrounded by video people who will call you out. Office manager dazzled by your templatey mograph? Great, early lunch! Do that for 2 years and you’ll be WAY behind everyone else. A thing I did when nobody else was pushing me was to try to do better was attempt one new concept every time I opened After Effects. It’s a small gesture, but it made a huge difference.
Do you see yourself in a job like this indefinitely, at any company? Are you in a market where most of the jobs are a one-man kind of a thing? Then just keep adding useful skills that make your job easier and your work better. If you’re like me and you really wanted to get out of that and into JUST post, work on those skills most.
If you stay updated on changes and continually learn more about the technical and the creative (and push yourself out of your comfort zone in your freelance work), I think you’ll be fine. When you stop spending any time in a given week learning something new or trying to get better, that’s when you should be concerned.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
Awesome Jump Cuts video, I hadn’t seen it.
I love how the FCPX repost for laughs has derailed the original post though.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
Bob, if I may ask a half-related question, is zero out data always nonsense or just in this case? Just curious.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
The only problem with skipping college right now is that a lot of video production is in-house. To get past the HR of a corporation or hospital or agency, they’ll expect you to have a college degree in something. HR people can’t translate years of experience.
College also opens up opportunities for internships. All the internships I did wouldn’t have taken me if I couldn’t do them for college credit. Markets will vary on this, but in Indianapolis there was an abundance of college kids trying to get in the door, they got priority.
EVERYBODY has been told to go to college, so now it’s like the minimum requirement.
Just offering another perspective. Bob isn’t wrong here, especially that most stuff you’ll learn practically rather than in class.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
If anyone tells you websites don’t work because the industry is over saturated and/or dying, please never listen to them.
You have a decent site. One thing that you should work in is mentioning your location. I think it’s on there once or twice. It should be in the first bit of text on the site, in the page titles, in the meta-data, etc. How else are people going to find you?
Google “video production surrey” and look at the results. It doesn’t strike me as a highly competitive search term because there’s a lot of random junk. Look up tips for optimizing your site for search, and add ALL your information as well as some Surrey related tags to your YouTube videos. YouTube videos show up before search results and can point people to your site.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
I agree with everything in this thread. Internships and loads of self-teaching in all your free time will pay off. Even if you can find a good group of filmmakers and make stuff with them.
The thing that I don’t think has been mentioned that I wish someone had told me: don’t get so wrapped up in getting to those two years of media production that you miss out on the first two years that set you up. Don’t push aside your various prereqs or scoff at seemingly unrelated electives. Take stuff that truly interests you, even if it takes more time. These are the things that will really set you apart. In my opinion, most of what you learn that will be useful in the real world happens in internships, on the job, or through self-learning. Not saying your two years of media production won’t teach you a bunch of stuff, it probably will. But being well balanced is important, and I wish I had taken a little more time to find classes that were interesting to me rather than rushing through to the end.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com