This unit is where all my progression related work and my business plan will all go.
Personal Statement
For this task, we'll be writing up a personal statement, these documents get sent off to the university/employer you want to apply for. The reason these documents are important (especially if you want to go into university) is because it allows whoever receives your statement to get a little bit more insight about you than they would with with a CV alone.
It is important to make your personal statement as professional as possible in order to give the university/employer a good first impression (so unfortunately, as much as I like to have a good joke, I'd have to keep the jokes to a minimum on this one)
For my personal statement however, I decided to take the one I did last year and update it in order to save myself a ton of headache having to re-write everything (and also I could use it as an opportunity to fix any mistakes as I went along):
For this current version, I actually had a lot of trouble getting it to comply with the 47 line limit (for those of you that didn't take a look at my FMP website, I don't really like word counts or line limits very much, especially if they only allow for so few words), but eventually after I removed everything that wasn't necessary (including the question headers themselves) while also re-writing what I already wrote so that it would make sense without the removed segments, I was finally able to make it fit within 47 lines.
An Update From The Future
I submitted a slightly different version to UCAS:
As it turns out, I had to make sure my personal statement didn't go over 47 lines AND didn't have a character total that exceeded 4,000 characters, but with the help of my family, I was able to get it finished in the end.
Career Action Plan/Updated CV
For this task, we'll be starting to make a career action plan and an updated CV (aka the Curriculum Vitae), the reason for this, in the case of the career action plan, is so that I can have a basic outline for what I want my future to be once I leave college. As for the CV, these are made so that I can send them out to potential employers and even take them into an interview if I ever wanted to get a job in the future:
This particular CV is layed out the way it is for a very good reason, as potential employer(s) who would receive it likely receive dozens of CVs and job applications every single day. This means that if my CV wasn't layed out in a way that was professional or concise, potential employers wouldn't even give it a first glance, as they would then think "well, if this person doesn't even know how to lay out a proper CV, why should I bother hiring him/her" and then throw it in the rubbish.
Unlike a script however, you only get one or two pages to write out a full CV since they also need to be nice and concise for the sake of getting an interview with a potential employer, since a lot of CVs would usually be sent off alongside your personal statement. (not to be confused with the "personal statement" section of the CV itself which needs to summarize the type of person you are)
Personal Summary
The first thing you must do in order to make a proper CV (besides the name and address) is write a single brief paragraph about yourself in order to give the potential employers an idea as to who you are as a person. One important thing you should do when writing this paragraph (as well as every other part of the CV for that matter) is to be honest with your employer about the kind of person you are while selling your good qualities because if you were to lie on your CV about who you are and what you've accomplished then you're a lot less likely to get the job you're applying for. (or any related jobs depending on whether or not your lies become so well known they get you blacklisted from the industry your job involves you working in)
Your probably wondering why you would even need to do this part if you have a personal statement on hand. Well you see, this personal summary section is meant to serve as a condensed version of your regular personal statement so that employers who don't have time to read an entire 47 line document about you can still get all the information they need about you to decide whether or not to call you in for an interview before hiring you for the job in question.
Experience and Employment
For this category, you'd list all your previous jobs and/or work placements as well as how long you were there and what your roles and responsibilities were while you were at said job/work placement. (in my case, everything I've done so far has been through work placements I did back in high school since I've never actually been employed before due to still being in education)
The reason you'd need to do this is because most jobs these days require that you already have some form of experience with the working environment, even a large chunk of entry level jobs (at least in the U.S.) now require at least a few years worth of experience in the field which is a bit paradoxical since they're supposed to be entry level:
but that's a grim reality for another day.
Education And Qualifications
This is where all that time you spent in school and college is going to come in handy, as it's here that you get to list off how long you were at said institutions and what grades and qualifications you managed to get while you were there (things such as your GCSE results and your course grades), the only place you wouldn't list in this section is where you went to primary school (not really sure why to be honest, it just works that way)
So How Was Producing Yours?
Mine wasn't too difficult to make since I just took the one I did last year and then modified it to include my Final Major Project, although doing so did run the risk of causing the CV to bleed over onto a second page thanks to a few asterisks I had to put alongside my English and Creative Media Level 2 grades so that I could explain the circumstances behind those on the bottom of the page but other than that, there wasn't much else of note I'm afraid (although eventually I will have to start picking and choosing which of my animations I put on the CV in the future)
Now Then, About That Career Action Plan.
This one took a little bit more time to make than the CV due to a combination of two main factors, the first being that I actually had to write in my answers from scratch rather than draw from a previous document from last year though I will say that typing the answers wasn't actually difficult by itself. With that being said however, the second and arguably more impactful factor actually came down to the timing of when I did this, as I was also in the middle of doing the fashion project at the same time and as much as I don't like the world of fashion, that project was still the top priority at the end of the day (in fact, me typing up about this very subject has taken so long that the engaging with audiences project has already been introduced, so that will probably take top priority)
Personal Research: Media Associations and Agencies
For this task, we have to do a little bit of research into agencies and associations that can help us in our desired field. In my case, this would happen to be animation, so I'll be looking into various organisations that can help me get jobs in that particular field, starting with...
Animation UK
After doing a little bit of digging around, I found out that this particular organisation only seems to accept applications from animation studios and visual effects companies such as Aardman Animation (responsible for Wallace And Gromit, Creature Comforts and Shaun The Sheep) and even the new guys over at Locksmith Animation (who are currently only responsible for the new Ron's Gone Wrong movie so far, but maybe they'll have more films in 10 years if Disney likes them enough), thus making this particular organisation more suited for when I get around to turning Slamination Studios into a real thing around 2027. (give or take 2 additional years)
Luckily, they aren't going to be totally useless for me if I don't end up getting to make Slamination Studios into its own studio, as they actually do have a section dedicated to hosting links to their existing member companies' (again, people such as Aardman and Locksmith) job listings, that way someone like me (who in this particular scenario will have had my Slamination Studios dream dunked into the nearest rubbish bin) could still find a way into the animation industry all the same except I likely won't maintain the full legal rights to whatever ideas I come up while working for other studios (even if I ask really really nicely), so that's something to keep in mind:
So What Do Animation UK Actually Do?
All joking about the new Dennis aside, we can see that these guys seem to be "the collective voice for animation", and they try and help those in the animation sector by lobbying the British government in order to influence them into making decisions in favour of the industry at large (I.E: allowing animation studios to write off part of their taxes and all that jazz)
Business Plan
For this task, we'll be forming a basic business plan for a photography studio over in Southport so that we'll all be more prepared for if we decide to go into business for ourselves
Competitive Research
In this part we'll be looking into various competitors in the local area in order to see what they do to stand out from the crowd, starting with...
Imageroom Studios
Link: http://www.imageroom.biz
What Do I Think Their Strengths and Weaknesses are?
On the home page we can see that this website prominently features a gallery of images that cycles through automatically. (with said images taking up the entire screen) I quite like the fact that these images are big because to me, it screams that the company are really proud of these particular images, which makes it look like they're putting their best foot forward within each category. (from wedding photography to couple shoots and even family pictures) This will make the customer more likely to want to hire out this particular company because of the high quality of the images themselves. For as much as I like how big the images themselves are however, I don't like how quickly they cycle through. This in and of itself wouldn't be a big problem if you could actually stop the cycle in any way, but as far as I'm currently aware at least, there's no real way to do this without clicking the same dot over and over again, which requires a really durable mouse and infinite energy on the part of the user (not to mention the constant clicking sound would get rather annoying)
Although as I would later find out, these numbers don't actually reflect how many photos they've actually taken for said projects, as going into the "pets" category and then selecting the "Grouse" project actually yields six pictures
Now that I know about this little feature, I think I'd prefer it if under the project total for each category they also listed how many photos they actually took because I think it'll better communicate how much experience they have in the field (and also the studio too)
This menu clearly lists all the pages that are available on the site and it's got the exact same layout throughout most of the pages, thus allowing the potential client to navigate the site with relative ease.
Keep in mind however that I said "most" of the pages carry the same menu aesthetic and button placements, because there is actually one page where things get shall we say... A bit funky to say the least (and not the disco dancing type either), and that's the client area page. (arguably the one place that the client is most likely to gravitate towards if they're willing to hire out the studio for a potential shoot)
I don't really like how radically different the aesthetic is on this particular page despite how (likely unintentionally) nostalgic as it is, but if the entire website had the same aesthetic I wouldn't have as big of a problem with this particular page (even it it meant the rest of the website wasn't as slick or modern)
Ok, But What About Pricing, What's That Like?
As you can see from this screenshot, they've got 3 different studio packages, one for new born babies, one for families and one for portfolios, each one with a more expensive starting price, the key word here being "starting", as these studios will usually try and sell more expensive packages. I would tell you what these more expensive prices are but unfortunately, if I click on the three boxes on the bottom of the pages, they take me to a page where I can send my e-mail off or use their phone number in order to contact them:
If I can make a rough estimate, I think that if the client were to go with any of the packages with all the optional (and likely expensive) amenities that would likely come along (frames, digital packages and what not), then my estimate would be that the highest cost of getting a baby picture (or pictures) would be around £1,720, while the family package would cost around £2,450 and the portfolio would end up costing around £6,452.64. Of course, since those prices are baseless estimates with only the starting price and the fact the company would likely want to sell extra amenities, I can't say whether or not these prices are reasonable (especially since I pulled them from thin air), but I personally think the starting prices are, or at least were, quite reasonable since it means the pictures themselves are not ridiculously expensive, but at the same time the studio could reasonably make a lot of money off the back of said pictures.
You're probably wondering why I added the part about how the prices "were" reasonable. Well the reason for this is that just above the three packages, you can actually see that just below the "Studio Packages" line it says "Jan 2018":
I feel that this little piece of information could potentially confuse the client later on down the line because if they were to simply go for the cheapest option and then find out the starting prices have changed since January 2018, the client will start to wonder what happened between then and now, thus opening the potential for the client to sue the company for false advertising. (that is if the prices have changed at all between then and now due to either an economic inflation or depression)
I personally believe that the company should be a little bit more open about their prices by including the costs for all the extra amenities, that way the client can make a more informed decision about whether or not they they want the extra amenities or not. (and also the company can avoid potential lawsuits going forward)
Now that I've taken a quick peek at Imageroom Studios, let's see how it contrasts with our next competitor...
Bakers Lodge Studios
What Do I Think Their Strengths and Weaknesses are?
I enjoy the old school aesthetic they're going for on the website itself because not only have they given themselves a unique aesthetic that stands out from the crowd but they've also given themselves a massive nostalgic appeal that'll take people who were there at the time, and to a lesser extent their kids (if they showed their kids the media they grew up on to begin with), on a nice trip though memory lane that'll make them more likely to take a look at the rest of the site, thus making them more likely to see the photos in question and think "you know, this company does quite a good job taking pictures, I think I might hire these guys for my next event"
With that being said however, one thing I don't like about the aesthetic is the fact that there's a lot of space along the sides of the page that doesn't get used:
I'm sure the reason they don't utilise all this space is because they want the website to be authentic to what a website would have looked like in the 1920s if the internet was around back then because back in the 1920s, each frame of a movie or cartoon would be put on a film reel and to make each image seem like it was moving, they would cycle through each frame really quickly until the picture on screen looked like it was moving, meaning the aspect ratio for most productions was more of a square than a rectangle:
However, I feel the website would have more to gain if it used a little bit more of that space to the sides of the screen because not only would they put themselves to a slightly more modern standard while keeping the same aesthetic, but they could also use the space they would gain on the bottom to add a little bit more detail about themselves (thus allowing the client to make a much more informed decision in the end)
But What's The Pricing Like?
Here, we can see this website actually takes a different approach from Imageroom studios because here, they actually show their prices without requiring you to enter your contact information first which is refreshing because now I can actually pin point more accurate prices this time around.
So here, we know that portrait shots cost a total of £50 with a £10 deposit (unless you decide to go with the "on location" option, that'll cost £60, also with a £10 pound deposit) for a photo shoot that lasts a single hour and manages to produce an average of 50 pictures an hour, and each photo can cost between £45 and £300 each (depending on whether you go with the smallest print size available or the biggest for all your pictures), so knowing this we can multiply the prices by 50 (assuming the client decides to order all 50 pictures at once):
So multiplying all of this leads us to a total cost of £2,250 for all 50 photos at their smallest print size (that being ten inches by eight inches), meanwhile the total cost for all 50 pictures printed at the biggest size currently available (which is thirty six inches by twenty four inches) leads us to a total cost of £15,000 (that's a lot of money for fifty images), thus allowing the company to make a lot of money off the back of those clients that decide to bulk order all their images at once at either end of the size spectrum (of course, most people won't have the money required to do this, especially for the largest scale images available but this entire scenario is a hypothetical and I'm only counting the prices on their own)
Personally, I like how open this website is when it comes to its prices because it means the client can more accurately determine whether or not the photographs this company produces would fit within their budget before they book their sessions. (unlike with Imageroom Studios where you'd have to contact them first in order to gain a proper understanding of their pricing model)
As such, if I were to open a photography studio I would probably want to keep my pricing model open so that my potential clients could more easily decide if they wanted to hire my company out. (I know this means I'll likely lose the commitment advantage that Imageroom has but it'll be worth it in the long run)
So How Was Looking Into Various Competitors?
Looking into the various competitors did end up proving to be a much longer task than I'd anticipated it would be because of how much detail I was able to get out of Imageroom Studios and Bakers Lodge Studios alone (plus the fact I was too busy focusing on other things (I.E: my fashion project and the new TV advert project which I've been placing greater focus on as of late), and since the deadline is approaching fast, I may need to speed through the next part of this unit.
What Happened Next?
So during some of the delivered sessions of the business plan for this unit, we ended up looking for properties as potential photo studio locations we could rent out for £1000 per month (which totals out to £12,000 a year) on the internet and we ended up finding a couple of them that were particularly note worthy:
One of the main things I like about this particular property is how convenient it is to get supplies such as stationary products, Food and medicine because this place is near shops such as Rymans (for stationary products), Marks & Spencer (which does have a food department) and Boots (for medicine), so if you end up needing new pencils for instance, you could just waltz on down to Rymans and get all the pencils you need.
Here, we can see that the total Net Internal Area (which as I just found out on google is what "Total NIA" means) comes to around 998 square feet (or 92.73 square meters if you prefer to do things via imperialism, I don't mind either way), meaning you don't have a whole lot of room to work with across both floors, meaning you'd need to get creative if you want to make it into a fully fledged photo studio (maybe make it like more of a photo shop rather than an entire studio), so size might be a bit of an issue. (although unlike property two, they never did a floor plan)
With that being said, I personally don't think that £12,000 pounds a year is really a reasonable rent price to pay in the long run because with the space you get here, you're not realistically going to be able to fit many clients in at a time (especially if there's an on going pandemic with social distancing in place):
This particular building is a little bit further from a bunch of the other major retailers than the first one, but at the same time it is still near where a lot of people like to park, so this place doesn't have to worry about competing with other shops as much, plus it also has a built in shower so that employees can take a shower in work before opening the shop for business (thus saving time in the long run)
This shop actually has a smaller Net Interior Area (or NIA for short) than the first shop (this place has a total NIA of 76.8 square meters, or 827 square feet if you prefer to do things the American way):
I actually think this place is a bit more reasonably priced than the first place (even though they both carry the same price tag of around £12,000) because of all the amenities you get with this one (mainly the shower, the two offices and the additional shop area) and the extra space you seem to get due to the bigger building (meaning you can potentially fit more clients in the building at once, meaning you'll make more money. (again, unless there's an ongoing pandemic)
Ok, So What Are The Start Up Costs And How Much Do We Need To Make?
Of course, if we were to do every cost saving measure possible (I.E: getting used equipment and getting your friends and family to come help you wherever they can) we can bring the price down to around £9,473, but even then, that's still on top of the £12,000 rent we'd have to pay, making our actual total start up cost £21,473 pounds (or if we buy everything new, £33,763), but that's not even accounting for the operational costs we'd be paying day by day:
The profit margin we ended up settling on trying to get was around £30,000 per year, so we ended up calculating that we would need our clients to buy around £158.58 per day, and assuming that our studio would be open 6 days a week, we realised that we would need to generate at least £951 per week if we wanted to make a profit (and over the 288 trading days, that would amount to around £45,672 in terms of sales needed to make that £30,000 profit at the end of the year)
Of course, since we only briefly touched upon this section in class, a lot of this stuff was already worked out for us so we were able to just get the whole thing written down on our blogs as part of this unit (even though it's taken from then to now for me to even complete this due to how much more I was focusing on my other projects at the time)
How Was Doing This Section?
I'll be the first to admit that doing this part did take me a lot longer than I thought given how so few weeks were even dedicated to delivering this part in the first place and the fact that I was too focused on the fashion project (and to a lesser extent, the current advertising campaign project) but I will say that even though this scenario focused on starting up a photography studio rather than an animation studio, I think that some of the things we learned here (I.E: cost of equipment and operations and even the start up costs) will still be of some use to me in the future (although if I were to go into business for myself, I would probably hire someone to handle all the boring business stuff while I take care of the creative side of things), even if the subject matter was somewhat dull (no offence to the teacher), but now I can finally move on to the self promotion part and then I can give the 20 second ad my full undivided attention.
Self Promotion
For this task, we'll be making things such as business cards in order to help promote ourselves to make us more likely to be seen and hired by other individuals and/or companies. The reason this part is important is because it allows us to present our best work to other people in order to make them more likely to think "ah yes, I really like this person's work, I think I'll hire them for [X Job]/take them in as a student on [X course]". But since every other professional is going to have the same idea, it's always good practice to make sure yours sticks out from the crowd in ways that are unique to you. (for example, if you wanted to be a comedic animator, it's a good idea to theme your self promotional material around that because then companies who are looking for that type of person are more likely to want to hire you if you show your passion for it within your material):
The full thing of course features a visual of a character I made up at around the same time called Billy Billson, as he does a slam dunk. With this in mind however, I also wanted to make it so that you could also tell what the studio was all about by just looking at the words, which is partly why I added in things like an explosion graphic behind the word "Slam" and even a few basketballs where the O's and the dots on the I's should go to add in a bit of a cartoonish flair to the whole thing.
A Job Opening
This particular graphic typically gets made whenever a company has an opening that they need to fill, as such they'll post a job listing in places such as Indeed.com, on their company website or even in the job section of a newspaper in order to make potential employees aware that a job is available and what the requirements are for it.
Using Media Molecule's producer listing from October 25th 2021, we can see they format their job listing with the title of the job on top and a brief description of what the job is all about in order to get the person reading it to begin considering whether or not the job might be for them:
Next, they'll list all the various responsibilities that the job entails, in this case, it's things such as "Supporting a cross disciplinary team, working alongside the game development team leads to define and deliver milestone content" and "Organising regular product reviews with stakeholder and team leads, handling feedback and deadline impacts", this exists to let the potential employer know what they're in for if they end up getting the job:
I'm lumping them all into one because of how similar they are in nature, as they basically all list what's required (or in the case of the advantageous category, what experiences may give you an advantage in the consideration process) for the job at hand, in this case, it's things like being "Proactive, self organised and able to work independently" and being "Able to work with multiple stakeholders of different experience levels and crafts to effectively coordinate deliverables" for the skills required section. The experience required section meanwhile notes that you need to have "Experience working in the games industry on AAA titles" and "Experience identifying and proactively resolving impediments to project delivery." These sections can give the potential employee an idea as to what kind of experience and skills they should already have in order to have a chance at getting considered for this job, although in some cases, by the time that person manages to even get the required experience, the job will have already been snatched up by someone with the ideal experience.
For my piece of self promotional content, I'm actually going to make a graphic for a potential job opening because I already did quite a few pieces of self promotional material last year and just feel like doing something a little bit different:
I'll be doing this using Pixlr because it's the software I'm the most familiar with and I'll be able to lay the whole thing out and also draw new graphics for it at the same time
The reason for this is mainly to keep this new job opening graphic in line with all my other self promotional graphics as well as the general branding I've got going on with the Slamination Studios brand as a whole
For this graphic, I'm going to be drawing a new image of Super Sheep because I figured that re-using a previous bit of art work might come across as lazy (plus I have the rest of this week to get it done)
I'm drawing the sign first because then I can simply draw his fingers around the base of the sign (thus making it easier to make him look like he's holding it)
After I finish up the drawing process, it's time to partake in the clean up process. This is where I erase any needless lines that clash with areas where that part would ordinarily be behind something else
This piece was actually quite easy to make since I had just a few main elements, those being the text, the Slamination Studios logo and Super Sheep himself and I was pretty much done. The hardest part in terms of effort was actually doing Super Sheep himself, but even then it was only because I decided to draw a new pose for this specific piece rather than import existing art I already made of him.
With this I can finally consider this unit all finished, meaning now I can fully focus on the 20 second spot (well, really it's more of a 20 second teaser trailer because the footage I'm making will be original ad footage but I digress)
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