Firstly thanks to those who made positive comments about my postings.
I've never seen a website that has clips intended to promote that could offend. Clicking on something that starts with "buttholes" and has phenomenally bad acting stopped me in my tracks. I tried the directing and colour grading but same feeble collection of clips, and as for grading? I can flip through a few presets to do that! Not grading! Sound is also pretty poor in some of the clips. I find it really odd that out of all the modules they take at uni, marketing yourself appears to be missing. Is it just me or is it a bit strange to get a degree in your chosen subject, and then have to ask basic marketing questions on a business forum. It's also perfectly normal for Internet forums to be blunt and honest when asked to review work from strangers. This is perfectly understood practice. It's even stranger when you consider that if we, as a business forum, find faults, a dedicated video forum would find far more.
Amen.
Unfortunately, the educational system in this country (and in the US) continues to churn out 'graduates' that are told that there is a career to be had, if you can play with a camera, record a rock band or photograph your girlfriend.
As I stated first time around, there are vocational courses in the UK and the US where the industry goes for its new talent. For video/film, that is 1. The Film School of USC, 2. The Film School of NYU and 3. in the UK, the NFTS. And that too is the batting order for quality.
If you recruit from those schools, you get a certain guarantee of quality. You know that the candidate will be able to take on a variety of tasks and understands what needs to be done. That may sound like a bit of a Mafia (and to some extent, it is!) and of course there is a great deal of 'friendship-deals' going on as a result. A rising star of the post-production world is very likely to hand on extra work to someone he studied with, than to a complete stranger.
The real problem for all the others is, that the biggest idiot in the lecture theatre is very often the person up-front. The lecturer or professor!
Because these people are very freaquently failed professionals, or, worse still, went straight from college into lecturing, they are blissfully unaware of the standards required in the real World. I have met lecturers and professors of music technology who did not understand what a decibel is and could not read music. I have met professors of film who had no idea about EBU standards or how to deliver them, i.e. basic nuts-and-bolts stuff!
Because these people are who they are, they set the bar very, very low indeed. Students graduate from 'The Wysuckie College for the Totally Dumb' without even the basics, such as how to frame a shot, how to set up a key light, or even how to lay-out a film script or solder a defective cable. How could they? These are often skills that their own lecturers do not have!
There are two ways to enter the film and TV market. One is to go to one of the ten-or-so famous film schools on Planet Earth, the other is to come in from left-field and just do it. Many famous directors, cinematographers, camera people and producers have never been anywhere near a film school. They just sat down with a big pile of books and learnt the craft from the ground up and then put what they had learnt into practice by being naturally brilliant!
Or as Peter Ustinov once put it, "Those who reach the top are often those who did not have the qualifications to detain them at the bottom!"
But if you want to climb a ladder, you do have to know where you are and which rung on the ladder you are on. As screen-writer and author Ayn Rand put it so brilliantly - "You can always avoid reality, but you can never avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
