My updated C.V…

In order for me to start looking for jobs in the media, it was vital that I updated my CV in order to sell myself and list my professional skills so I can achieve a good career. My updated CV is below;

CURRICULUM VITAE

HAYLEY LAND

PROFILE

I regard myself as a cheerful and friendly person, who is reliable and trustworthy. I believe that I am well presented, ambitious and outgoing with good communication skills. I work well in a team and I am also able to work on my own initiative. Keen to learn, I would happily undertake any training while in employment.

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS

CARDINAL WISEMAN R.C. SCHOOL 2000 – 2005

PHOTOGRAPHY G.C.S.E. A*
SCIENCE G.C.S.E. B
FRENCH G.C.S.E. B
MATHS G.C.S.E. C
ENGLISH G.C.S.E. C
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION G.C.S.E. C
GERMAN G.C.S.E. C
HISTORY G.C.S.E. D
BUSINESS STUDIES G.C.S.E. D

CARDINAL WISEMAN R.C. SCHOOL 2005 – 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY A – LEVEL A
THEOLOGY A – LEVEL C
MEDIA STUDIES A – LEVEL C

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
CONNEXIONS SPORTS CENTRE 2005 – 2007
PART TIME RECEPTIONIST
Covering reception duties, dealing with the public both face to face and over the telephone, cash handling and till work.

TESCO’S 2006 – CURRENT
PART TIME CUSTOMER ASSISTANT
Duties include working on checkouts, communicating with the public, self scan support , kiosk work and customer services.

MERCIA THUNDER 2009 – CURRENT
EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR
Representing the radio station at events throughout Coventry and Warwickshire. Skills include communicating and interviewing the public and involving them in our activities. Sometimes reporting back to the radio station and working within a team of other thunders. I have also had a clear CRB check as sometimes the job involves working with children- playing activities with them, face painting etc.

OTHER INFORMATION

I am currently awaiting my results from my final year at Coventry University. By the end of the summer I will have gained my BA honors degree in media production. I have a great passion for the media, as it is something that I find thoroughly interesting. After studying media at A level and then again at degree level I have learnt about different aspects of the media and developed new skills and knowledge about the subject in order for me to gain a career in the subject. Recently myself and eight other students on my media production course at university got together and co ordinated the whole show down to every last detail including decorations, organisation of the event and the promotion of the degree show. This was a real achievement for the few people that helped co ordinate the show as out of the seventy nine people on the course, nine people grafted and put the hard work into organising the show. I was very pleased with myself when we managed to pull it off and I proved to myself that I was able to work well in team under intense pressure- quickly and efficiently to create something spectacular.

Last year I had the great opportunity of working for BBC Coventry & Warwickshire involving a project on Coventry Market to celebrate its 50th birthday. I helped produce a short video called “Coventry Market The Musical”. I was lucky enough to be handpicked from my course to help out on the project. This project went on to win an award in which I was glad to hear and I feel proud that I was lucky enough to be a part of the whole experience as it gave me more of an insight into the world of television.

My duties included “cable bashing”, setting up lighting, encouraging cast members to sing along in the musical and helping to push the camera monitor along whilst filming.

A career in the media is what I aspire to do as I think its suits my bubbly and confident personality perfectly aswell as having experience in television working with the BBC I have also had some experience in radio. In my second year of university completed a module in my university which involved putting a radio show together in a group of three. My role as producer meant I had a lot of the responsibility and control over the show so it was vital I did my job correctly. My group successfully completed this module with the highest grade which is a ‘1st’ . My group and I were extremely pleased with this result as it reflected all the hard work we put into making our radio show the best it could be.

I also completed a work experience placement at Mercia FM, a local radio station. My duties included working firsthand with the presenter and producer of the breakfast show. I was able to polish my technical and editing skills through editing audio pieces as inserts for the breakfast show. I have also been given many great opportunities through working at Mercia one of which was appearing on central news for an insert they were doing on a ‘seven year old agony aunt’ on the breakfast show. Another great opportunity that has come about through mercia is a permanent paid position as a ‘Mercia thunder’, promoting the radio station at several events in around Coventry.

PERSONAL DETAILS

DATE OF BIRTH 22nd May 1989
MARITIAL STATUS Single
INTERESTS I enjoy dancing, listening to music, reading,
and shopping.
DRIVING LICENCE Full

To sum things up so far…. My Motivation Statement

After graduating and receiving a BA Honors degree in Media Production, I hope to gain a career within the media. My ideal job would be within television or radio. I decided to choose media to study as I think I have the right personality for a job in the media.
During my first year at university I gained experience in being a television producers ‘P.A’. I had to be organised and a good timekeeper, communicating with the floor manager in the studio making them aware of the time limits of items and how much time the presenters had left till the next item.

On the other hand, radio is something I would love to do most, my dream job would
be presenting my own radio show. At university in my second year I developed the skills needed to be a radio producer as that was my role within my broadcast group.
As a producer, you need to be very organised, piecing the show together and making sure it all goes smoothly. Also, being quite creative is a huge factor needed for the job as you have to come up with unique ideas for items for the show in order to gain listeners.
When looking for a job within the media particularly radio, I need to consider the criteria needed for the job- whether I have enough experience and qualifications. I have completed a work experience placement at Mercia FM a local radio station, this enabled me to work firsthand with the presenter and producer of the breakfast show.

Through working at Mercia I have been able to develop my technical skills in the radio studio as well as my editing skills on the program ‘audacity’. I have also been able to develop my knowledge on the ins and outs of radio and been able to be organised and complete certain tasks that were asked of me within a time limit.

Through working at Mercia on placement I have been offered a permanent position as a Mercia ‘Thunder’ just generally promoting Mercia at events throughout Coventry and Warwickshire. I have been working as a thunder for a few months now and I thoroughly enjoy it, I consider this job as my ‘foot inside the door’ inside the world of radio and I’m hoping to use this job as experience when it comes to applying for a job in the media industry.

Skills I possess….

Throughout my university course I have developed  new skills all of which will be of benefit to me when it comes to finding a job. In my first year in the television production module I was ‘Directors P.A’  for this job I had to have good time keeping skills, be organised with good communication skills as I was communicating from the gallery to the studio via the floor manager. In my second year at university in the broadcast production module, I was the producer in my group for the role I had to be organised, research into good content for the show, basically directing and editing content for the show.

I was also lucky enough to be picked along with a small handful of other people on my course to work with the BBC on a musical they were doing about coventry market. The skills I developed working with them were TV production related- cable bashing, some filming, crowd control and general runner duties.

Other skills I have also developed are radio related when I worked with Mercia FM breakfast show team for my work experience I developed basic editing skills, answering calls off the public, going out and interviewing the public (vox pops) to be included in the show and also editing the content for the show.

These are all skills that I have developed during the three years on my course at university.

Looking back….

Looking back to before I started university I had to think about what course I wanted to study at university and why. At school I had studied photography at GCSE and A level and was very interested in the subject. I also enjoyed media studies but as I was unsure what to do I decided to chose the ‘media production’ course as it explored different types of media as well as photography in the course.

When it came to applying for this course I had to put together something called a ‘personal statement’ this is where you as a student have to ‘sell yourself’ and show your passionate about wanting to join the course. This in a way is what I have to do when applying for jobs as there will be lots of other people applying for the same job you have to show you’re ambitious and better than the rest.

Below is a draft of my personal statement that I have found which I thought may be useful to include as it shows me ‘sellingmyself. I don’t know whether this is the actual statement that I sent off I may have ammended it a bit before I sent it off but it gives you a bit of an idea of my passion for the media.

The media has always been of great interest to me so my decision to study the subject at degree level stems from a fascination of the subject and experience at ‘A’ level.

 In today’s diverse society we are surrounded by the influential media whether it be radio, television, newspapers or magazines.

 For me, reading the latest celebrity gossip magazine is always more satisfying than reading an intellectual novel, as I love to know the ins and outs of the world of fame.

My work experience at The Evening Telegraph offices within the city centre enabled me to have an insight into the advertising and marketing side of the media. Whilst there, I was able to input advertisements into the newspaper, communicate with customers on the phone and understand the layout of the newspaper.

 To be a radio presenter has always been my dream career as it fits my personality perfectly, I am a very bubbly person with confidence who loves to chat and discuss the latest gossip. I am also very determined; I try my hardest till my efforts succeed.

Dancing at the Millennium Dome has always been a highlight of my life. In the year 2000 I was chosen out of hundreds of people who auditioned in Coventry to be in a show called “Coventry-Our Town’s story”.

The show was a tribute to Coventry and took audiences on a journey through its past, present and possible future, I was one of 25 dancers that were chosen. Actors, singers and musicians were also chosen out of the hundreds that auditioned.

Dancing has always been a great passion for me since an early age it has helped give me confidence and also team building skills. I have also volunteered at my dance school in the under 5’s class in which I helped teach the children to dance. I used songs they were familiar with so it was enjoyable for them and using patience and persistence I helped them to improve.

My A level photography work is also relevant to the media as the two fit together when it comes to magazines and newspapers. I take great pride in my photography work as I try to make my work unique and to the best of my ability.

Introduction…

I am now in my final weeks of university and actually can’t believe how fast these three years have gone. It only seems like yesterday that I was starting, sat in the big conference room introducing ourselves to the rest of the people on the course. Now I have to face reality and find a career for myself… scary stuff :s. When I first started uni I wasn’t sure as to what field of the media I would like to go into at the end of my course, but now I am thinking I would like to go into either radio or television as these are the fields in which I think I excel at. During my three years at uni i have enojoyed doing the television and radio broadcast modules and got a good grade with them so this has helped me make my decision as to which field of the media I enjoy most. I understand that the media is a very competitive industry and that in order for me to achieve a job in either television or radio I have to stand out from others applying for the job. In order to do this, I have to make sure I have a good CV, including experience that I have gained in these particular fields of media and show ambition.

Our Stop-motion..

Zoe texted us all last night saying that she had no luck trying to put together the stop motion using the images from the shoot on Monday so we therefore decided to meet at 9am this morning to try and get it done together. Zoe was twenty minutes late which slowed down the process a bit as myself Charlotte and Stacey couldn’t get started on the editing the stop motion as Zoe had the memory stick with the images on. When Zoe arrived we quickly went down to the basement to get started on the editing.

After uploading the images onto final cut pro we had to choose which dance sequences we wanted to use. As half of the photoshoot I danced around with my hair down and the other half I danced around with my hair up we had to choose which ones we preferred. After looking at the dance sequences together we all decided we would go with the ones with my hair up as the hair down ones are a bit distracting. I am glad today is over with to be honest as it was quite frustrating, the process of editing which we thought would take about 2 hours ended up taking us 5 hours.

We all are no experts on final cut pro and we kept encountering problem after problem with it. One of our first problems we encountered was that half our sequence of the stop motion was at one speed and then when it got to a certain stage in the sequence the images started to flash up really fast on the screen even though all the images were set to the same pace. Another problem we were encountering was that some of our images kept flashing up as ‘unrendered’ which was a bit annoying as we tried everything and nothing would solve this problem for us. After a while of getting nowhere myself and Stacey decided to see if we could find bex the technician to see if she could help us. Luckily she was nice enough to come down and help us and proved to be a great help to us by writing a step by step guide of what we should do to overcome our problems and transfer our stop motion onto disk.

At this point it was just myself, Charlotte and Stacey editing our stop motion piece, slowly but surely we managed to finish our stop motion piece adding in the pictures of Terry as little flashes here and there to portray the narrative. I am really glad we managed to reshoot our stop motion video as the dance sequence flows so much better than before. As it took us a long and gruelling five hours to put together our stop motion, Charlotte offered to take the audio for the piece home and put it onto CD for us to hand in which was a great help for all of us.

We also collected our final prints today to include in our hand in for Friday we were all really excited to see them as they are favourite prints. We are happy overall with our prints apart from two of them, in one of them our model is doing a headkick and the hair in it has turned out far too photoshopped in some ways I wish we hadn’t edited it now as it looked better before I don’t think we are going to include this in our final hand in so we are down to 6 prints now instead of 7. Also on our canvas print there is a whole section near the models foot which is unedited which was missed out in the photoshop process I think the fact that it is printed onto canvas has magnified the problem even more but theres nothing we can do about it now. I suppose we can learn from our mistakes and overcome this issue when it comes to printing our images for the actual degree show. The other images however have turned out fantastic and we’re all really pleased with them.

So for our final hand in we are submitting;

-six prints

-audio disk

-dvd with stop motion on it

-research portfolios

and obviously our individual reflective blogs

We are now ready for hand in bring it on!

Photoshoot 5 .. stopmotion reshoot..

Earlier on today we had our stop motion reshoot, we had it in one of the photography studios at uni in which we had used before so we were set up pretty fast. I was a bit nervous at first dancing in front of my friends as I wasn’t sure I was as good as the previous model we had to shoot with (my sister). After a while I started to get into it and I think I successfully achieved a dance sequence that would look effective for our stop motion. We aimed to just achieve a basic look (as before with our previous stop motion video) I just wore a black leotard and we had a plain white background with basic light to achieve the effect we wanted. We were able to progress with the photoshoot quickly and efficiently and by about an hour and a half into the shoot we decided to call it a day and stop photographing. In this photoshoot we managed to take well over 500 images which is alot better  than 50 images from the photoshoot before, so hopefully we have a lot of images to work with.

As we had worked pretty quickly on the shoot we decided to get cracking on editing it  and try and get it all done in one day so that we could all concerntrate on our individual workbooks and blogs for hand in.We went down to the basement to use the apple macs which have the program ‘final cut pro’ on them as we thought this would be the fastest programme to edit our stop motion video on.

Unfortunately as we’d finished uploading all our images onto the system Janette came down to lock the rooms up as the basement closes at 5pm so we didn’t get very far! Fortunately Zoe has offered to take the images home and see if she can edit them on moviemaker on her laptop at home as the deadline is heavily approaching us. Hopefully we will have a sufficient stop motion video shortly, im starting to feel nervous at the deadline is so soon its scaring me. Today Zoe brought in some detailed room plans that she spent time on to show our final project display room plan in detail to include with our images to hand in with our final piece.

Interim crit 3

Today we had our interim crit with Mez and Paul, we had prepared a powerpoint presentation to show to them which included our process of production and some of our images. Our photography cluster group were in the room with us as well which was good as it was more of a discussion amongst friends and we were all giving feedback on eachothers work along with the tutors Mez and Paul. We didn’t really need our presentation as everyone else were just discussing where they were at with their work so far but it was good that we were prepared. As Zoe was late to the presentation we waited till she arrived before we started discussing our work so this gave us more of a chance to think of queries that we had about our work to put to the tutors.

When Zoe arrived we ran through our presentation and discussed our images and our practice set ups along with our stop motion video- at this point we were really struggling to edit our piece and it wasn’t coming together as we had planned. Mez asked us how many images we had for the stop motion, when we told her it was only about 30 odd she explained it would only be about a 5second piece, we did realise this at the time but it seemed that we got a little side tracked in the process, so.. this posed us a problem and gave us a few options to get round this;

-use the practice stop motion that was quickly put together for our set up in our room to test the projector and the screen. This consisting of some of our photographs we want to use as our final prints so this wasn’t a good idea.

-use the stop motion we had, and submit it unedited with a description about what went wrong and why. This would not really be acceptable though to submit as a final piece, we are hoping for a good final grade to reflect the hard work we have put into this project so this would definately jeopardise our chances of getting a good grade.

-reshoot!- This seems to be the most sensible option and the only option we have really at saving our stop motion piece. Although the hand in date is a week today we are cutting it a bit fine and putting pressure on ourselves but its what uni’s all about so this is what we’re going to have to do.

After the interim crit we decided to book out the photography studio for Monday 2-4pm and we also booked out all the appropriate equipment we needed to shoot including camera, tripod and lighting. All we needed now was one of our models to be free on this day so we quickly phoned (mine and Charlottes sisters) to see if they were free at this time on Monday. Unfortunately both of our sisters are in school at this time and said they couldn’t make the shoot. My other sister April who we have used for two photoshoots before is stuck in Spain unfortunatley because of the ash cloud and doesn’t get back till Tuesday so we were really desperate for a model. As our group were really struggling to find someone to dance for the stop motion reshoot I decided to ‘take one for the team’ and step in and be the model for the shoot. I am an ex dancer and know how to put a dance sequence together but I don’t think I will be able to be as good as my sister or Charlotte sister would be but I will try my hardest and we are desperate, I just hope I don’t let my group down.

After this other major setback we had with our stop motion and being stressed about reorganising another shoot we decided to go over to the print bureau to pick up our print from Dave that he promised us the other day. Unfortunately the print didn’t turn out half as good as we expected it too which is annoying, the photograph we chose to get printed is brilliant but the print just doesn’t do it any justice! The colouring on the canvas print lets it down we put in a image with a red dress in to be printed and it has turned out orange instead and the image seems blurry and distorted . We have kept the image and paid just under £40 for it, I suppose its just a trial and error process for us.

We have now decided to have two images put onto canvas with white backgrounds as we feel this will turn out better. We decided for hand in we are not going to submit our two big two metre prints. Instead we  handed in 7 images at the print bureau, 6 will be printed on a gloss style paper at size A3 and one will be printed at A2 on canvas. We had a little help editing little things like  speckles on the floor and stuff  on photoshop before we put them in for printing so hopefully these will turn out good. These prints should be ready for us at some point next week just before the hand in.

In our interim crit presentation we included a detailed picture in which Zoe designed of how our room would look with all our images displayed on the walls and the screen for the stop motion. Paul was really impressed with this and said that if we wanted, instead of setting up our final piece in the radio studio and the screen for our stop motion we could just hand in a detailed plan of how the room would look with all our prints displayed in it. He said that if we designed aplan showing every angle of the room and how we plan it to look like this would be acceptable to hand in. This was great news as we were struggling on finding the time to set up the room fully and film it to hand in for our final project.

Next task- photographing another stop motion video to hand in for our final project ready for this time next week-the hand in! scary stuff!!

Dave- our Saviour….

Today and yesterday my group met up to discuss our images and to do a few touch ups of our prints. We have our final interim crit on Friday so we have to show them everything we have done so far.

Today myself and Charlotte went to visit Dave in the print bureau to ask him nicely if there was any way of him being able to have a print on canvas ready for us on Friday to show in the interim crit. We were expecting him to turn us down as we realied we didn’t give him a lot of notice but he was kind enough to say yes and he’d definately have it doen for us on Friday- what a saviour!

We originally wanted two of our prints put onto canvas to show as our final prints on Friday but as a group we hadn’t all agreed on the final two we wanted to us so as it was just me and Charlotte we didn’t really make the final decision especially as it would be costing us £100. We decided to just go with one of the images to be put in for printing so at least we’d have something to show for Friday and hopefully by then we would have all decided which one we wanted to use for our second one.

As our test print turned out to be too small, we decided to make the measurements of this print-914mm x 1360mm which will hopefully be the right size. We will be picking up the print before the interim crit on Friday, I can’t wait to see it as the picture is one of my favourites. Below is the picture we are printing onto canvas

Next step- Preparation for interim crit 3

Group meeting…

Yesterday and the day before we had have brief group meetings to discuss how everyones feeling really. We all had a quick look at the audio for the interview with Terry and were quite pleased with it, it just needs editing but thats something we can leave till later as we are experienced in editing audio so it shouldn’t take us long. We had a quick look through the images from Terry’s photoshoot too and agreed they have turned out the way we wanted them too- just simple images focusing on Terry.

We had a discussion about which images we would all like to use for our final prints onto canvas, we have chosen a handful of our favourites so we just need to whittle those down to two prints now. We also had an attempt at editing some of the images but we are going to wait till we all decide on the final prints.