This project was designed to develop our skills as professional workers, and to test our work ethics and procedure when working with real clients. It was important to handle this project as professionally as we could which meant detailed plans, meetings and budget reports. Myself and my project partner attempted to do this to the best of our abilities which I feel our work shows. This project allowed us to focus our efforts on our ideal field of industry with a range of projects that featured both film compositing as well as an interesting and exploratory delve into architectural design.
Our initial meetings with our client Mark Cunniffe, were at first a reasonably light amount of work. After showing him short clips of what we could do for him, we increased his confidence in us which meant we were given not only more responsibility but more work. The key with this was to that we were confident with our software platform whilst at the same time not over stating our abilities. We had summarised that these were real projects and that failing to complete them to the clients satisfaction would not only mean no payment (realistically) but would also ruin our reputation by word of mouth. We began our partnership with Mark by designing a 3D replica of the Yerevan Theatre, which he intended us to light for a series of concerts later this year. After initial successes we were asked to work on a project closer to home, creating a new lighting display for the main building at AUCB. In comparison to 3D work we had done before we had to get as close to the actual Theatre as we could which was extremely challenging as we had very little reference material to hand. We used a scaling system by finding out exactly how tall one column was and from that we could reverse engineer the other measurements. Ultimately, due to an increasing unstable situation in the middle east the concert has been put on hold indefinitely and thus our project was halted at a relatively early stage. This taught us several key points to remember whilst working with a client; that getting contracts stating that we would be paid for our work up until that point was vital as well as keeping an eye on any news that may affect work based overseas. This hitch in the project very much made us aware of the problems with freelancing and this resolved us to make sure that on our other jobs on this professional project we have a greater understanding of the risks and occurrences involved.
Therefore, when we began work on the AUCB project we were much more cautious with our design. We used the scale drawing the original architect had used as well as repeated trips to the actual building so as to get reference photo’s and detail shots of areas such as doors and windows. This early base of research allowed us to create a basic model much quicker than on the theatre production which showed us that a small allocation of time towards research and where appropriate on hands “experience” so to speak. It also came to be of even great use, as we were asked to provide basic backgrounds of the surrounding buildings for effect as well as use them as reference material for lighting. Thus a few hours of our time taking reference shots was in lieu of making repeated trips back to university to get further details.
A key part of the projects was a successfully managed system that allowed us to focus on the work whilst simultaneously making sure we weren’t over budget or behind schedule. The project management fell mainly to me. I learnt to use a gant chart to careful plan how we would allocate our time accordingly on both projects, including a small ‘contingency’ gap in case we needed more time in a specific area. Making sure that we had this measure of preparation was extremely useful as it meant we could follow our own strict schedule but also keep the client happy by continually updating them on progress. It was from this that I could design our budget that we were able to keep to throughout. Through designing the budget, I realised that this pre-planning would be vital were I to find myself in a freelancing situation as not being aware of certain expenditures and overheads could potentially destroy a small business cash flow which operates drastically differently to a larger organisation.
Around 8 weeks into this professional project, we were approached by a friend of ours to do some minor compositing on his FMP. The job was to create an automated turret based upon a US system, to be placed in a scene in the film. We used reference material to build and the scale the device properly. The main problem with this smaller project was acquiring the footage we needed to use, which was down to a lack of communication with the client. We found out that the issue was that we were essentially being sub contracted to do the work and thus had to wait in a chain to be requisitioned anything. This taught us a valuable lesson in being aware of when we are subcontracted instead of being hired directly, and that we needed to add additional time to our scheduling as we may not be a priority in the overall production.
What I felt was most beneficial was the liaising between us and Mark. At the start of this project my confidence with people within a work environment was relatively low, however needing to ask important questions and make key decisions sometimes without a clients direction became a vital part of the project. It also meant I had to be confident in the decisions made in case I needed to justify them to the client. This also encouraged me to evidence all the changes and reasons for said changes very carefully so as (at least in a professional environment) avoid any legal problems that could arise.
In conclusion this project has certainly helped me develop my outlook on how to handle projects from now on. This essentially means that I have tried to keep better documentation throughout this project not only for my piers and the client themselves but now I realise for future projects I might be involved in that require a similar skill-set. I feel that we have achieved our goal of expanding not only our skill-set but our potential work base as Mark may now have more work for us in light of what he deems a very successful project. We hope to use our lessons learned to develop our work in the coming months.
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