At the beginning of April, the final project of the year was set for the class, in which we had to contact a production company and arrange a work placement. On completion of the placement, the report was to be written. The course leaders had given us until the end of the summer (27th August) to finish the project. I unfortunately had such dire luck at first trying to find a placement with a company. I probably heard every excuse under the sun trying to sort something, including they weren’t interested, just plainly rejecting me, saying they would call me back etc. I had called well over one hundred companies and used the internet, phone book, family and friends to get contacts for me to try. I almost didn’t make it back to university and had alternate plans, until I had one lucky day a couple weeks ago where three different companies said they would consider me. As a result I obtained a placement with a company called Lattitude Productions Ltd, which is based in Rushlake Green, East Sussex. This was very convenient seeing as it is only a twenty minute drive from my house. I spoke to one of the directors called Rob Coyle, and ended up having a twenty minute conversation with him about the media, my course, where the placement would take me, and even a chat about elephants which was unexpected! Eventually I sent them a link to my Web Blog and my Youtube page so they could get a sample of the type of work I have produced so far. The next day I heard from someone called Matt Dove saying that they would take me on, and that they had some worked lined up for me the following week. As it happened this day was my birthday as well, so it was a nice present to know my placement would finally be sorted. I researched into the company via their website, which they advised me to do. The site lists their entire catalogue of videos, whilst allowing browsers to be informed to events and updates by subscribing to their newsletter. With the goal of spreading awareness in mind, this method is an efficient and essential communications tool. The site also lists a selection of their previous and current clients, which is quite extraordinary with the likes of Shell, Honda, and Sony. After browsing the website, I felt prepared to take on the placement from Monday 21st September – Friday 25th September 2009.
On Monday morning, I drove to Lattitude via many country lanes. At first I was sure I had taken a wrong turning, thinking I would be heading into the town centre to find an office block. I was absolutely amazed to find myself outside a beautiful country house in the solitude of Heathfield. I realised it was obviously a family business and they had decided to work from home.
I arrived at exactly 9 30am to meet Rob (Director) and Matt (Marketing) in person, and I was welcomed into the house with a cup of tea by Rob’s lovely wife Ginny (Assistant Director). Following a half hour discussion, we got to work. The first glimpse of the office was surprising as it looked smaller from the exterior. Rob provided me with some of the films from their library and I made my way through them all in about an hour. I learnt that Lattitude promotes safety awareness all around the world through producing videos for use in the work environment. Interestingly, they themselves as a company do not have to undergo a Health and Safety Risk Assessment as by definition, they are a company with less than five members of staff. Their latest approach, as a company, to add interest to the subject of safety is to use animals as strong examples of teamwork. The most recent acclaimed video they created titled ‘All for One – the Meerkat Way’ was about the teachings of safety, yet utilised in the natural world by meerkats. The latest working project, to which I contributed, titled ‘Giants of Leadership’ is the follow up to ‘All for One’ about the topic of leadership in a generic work force, and this video will use the majestic elephants in their natural habitat as the example. The company purchased the raw footage of these animals off the BBC. I thought this was such a brilliant and creative idea for such a niche market in the industry. Once I understood my surroundings, I was given my first assignment. A video containing raw footage of an hour and a half interview with Martin Woodall (Health and Safety Consultant) lacked a transcription of the dialogue. It was my first duty to make sure I took down all the beneficial dialogue, and scrapped the banter and outtakes, so that Bruce (Editor) could cut down and polish up the eventual DVD, which was potentially to be used on their website too. This was a very slow job, but seeing as this was new to me I was pleased with the results.
It took me two of the five days (9 30am to 5pm) to complete this process, and Rob was surprised I finished so early. I included the timecodes of each question and answer, as well as making the questions and headers bold. I emailed the transcript document to Ginny which she printed out to give to Matt. He then condensed the script to a selective set of questions made useful for the DVD extra. Whilst he did this, I was asked to take the two family dogs out for a quick walk across their land. It was on this walk I reflected on the task I had undertaken, and how it hadn’t crossed my mind previously. There are editors out there who need to use script less footage, like the one I worked on, and if they were just handed it without any sort of guide, it would be a nightmare trying to tackle it. The transcription process saves many hours and stress for someone editing video, such as I have done in the past. I have learnt to acknowledge and accept this process is a required skill which needs improvement. This will add to my flexibility as a video editor. I got back from the walk and Matt had just finished the job. He emailed it to me to have a look at, and if I felt happy with the way the questions and answers flowed, I could have a go at composing the video using Adobe Premiere CS4. I accepted the task and got started immediately.
The footage was filmed using a green screen with Martin sat in front of it. I am familiar with this procedure as I have used chroma key before on previous projects in college, and got to know it much better during my first year in Bournemouth. I filtered out the green and created a background using the company logo in Photoshop. This specific task is familiar to me and only took an hour and a half to assemble, which Rob and Matt were very satisfied with. The discs are normally sent up North to Bruce, where he is situated, so he can compose the videos in Final Cut. This time round, I saved them some money by composing a version to a professional standard right in the office using my laptop. All they need to do is get approval from Martin, seeing as he is the star of the video. The good news is not only will my video be published and therefore copyrighted on their website in time, but they’re also going to send a copy to the company ‘Miracle Gro’ as an introductory video to represent Lattitude. This made me very happy, knowing I could potentially bring the company in an extra client, and a well known one too.
My understanding of Copyright is to give an author exclusive rights to the publication, distribution and ownership of its creations and to prevent theft by others. If the author wishes to have their work reproduced elsewhere with permission, then the user may have to financially reward the author through royalties. This is decided by a set percentage of the income generated which directly goes to the author.
Another task I took on various times was organising and sorting the DVDs for them. This job just involved assembling new sleeve prints, transparent cases and newly burnt, labelled discs together. If parts of older film copies were in good condition, I would reuse those as well. This completely refreshed their DVDs ready to dispatch to new and current clients. I am used to this kind of work, taking into account I previously worked for a book wholesaler in Eastbourne called Gardners Books. Here I would do the same job repeatedly, sorting books into boxes and disposing of the damaged ones. Horrible repetitive work, but doing so in a work environment like Lattitude, it hardly felt like work.
On my final day I bought the family a gift to show my gratitude. At the end of the day, I was surprised with a £100 cheque for my week’s efforts, which I was amazed and thankful to accept. This wasn’t the end of the good news, as they had more DVDs lying round the office which needed transcripting. This work has been offered to me, which I accepted and look forward to undertaking. I feel like I have made new friends working with Lattitude, and I’m welcome back anytime to visit since they’re only twenty-five minutes away from my residence. Unfortunately the company already has an editor on board, but I’ll be more than happy to take on additional work such as transcripting if required. I may also be going back next summer to help Matt around the office, as the family are off to Hawaii for a wedding. Even if I don’t necessarily get a job with Lattitude, they have many contacts with other companies which they could recommend to me on completion of my degree, and perhaps put a good word in. The placement has opened my eyes to a taste of what the video industry has to offer and how it functions. I accept that I won’t end up in a nice country house as I did this week, but the works of video production are all the same. The work I took on was exactly what I intended to base my placement on, which I found very interesting. As a generic outlook, the placement excelled my expectations. At first I thought I would be stuck in a box room of an office block, but a country house in Heathfield was quite the contrary.
I am still steering towards a job in the post production field. This is the most realistic option for me, and I have been complimented on my editing skills in the past and present. I’m still considering the path of my future career, but definitely have an idea or two. I would like to start up my own business in a niche field like Lattitude, and I have several postgraduate friends back home who are interested in media. They have shown interest in working together as a career, otherwise I would be happy to freelance for companies. If I were to take on something like this, then I would enjoy working with a reliable and rewarding team like the Lattitude staff. Working in a group, where individuals possess different strengths would give me the chance to develop my weaker areas. This approach is similar to that taken by Lattitude Director Rob Coyle. He worked his way up over the years until he created Lattitude with co worker and friend Martin Woodall. Before this, Rob used to work for the company ‘Video Arts’ which was founded in 1972 by John Cleese.
I think my strengths were visible in fields familiar to me already, such as editing the video for their website using Adobe Premiere CS4. I picked up the new skill of transcripting video, and put some old skills into fruition when sorting their DVD collection. I got top marks on my forms for being organised, reliable and communicative. I don’t think I’ve necessarily identified a weakness throughout the placement, but there was the nightmare of organising one beforehand. I acknowledge that I failed to complete the placement by the date set. If nobody else had this problem then I must have been doing something wrong, so this could be considered a weakness worth improving. In conclusion, the fact is with anything and everything; there’s always room for improvement. I will strive to build on my current skills, and excel in the newer ones throughout the second year of the Digital Media Production course, which commences in October.
