Well yet again my blog turns up late. Last week felt like a pretty busy week but if I'm very honest with myself I'm not sure how busy it actually was.
Bare with me a moment and keep reading as I will explain that statement in due course. I am currently unemployed and pursuing, not just film and tv work but to some extent any job in general that will pay me some money to lubricate the wheels of life and keep them turning. I feel that whilst a job in film or tv would be most ideal (and most enjoyable in all honesty) I would also be happy to be employed and earning money to make my own projects with. My initial thinking was to get a relevant job when I first finished my Masters Degree at the end of 2010 and after a few months without much success the attitude of any job will do slipped in and having done a few part-time and temporary roles up until the start of 2012 this seemed to stop working too. I've been unemployed and on Job Seekers allowance for 8 months now. After 6-7 months I was losing motivation, something had to be wrong, I'm not exactly under qualified and yet I wasn't getting any responses let alone interviews. I was advised to go see a careers advisor, ironically an independent one when the Job Centre have there own.
This ladies name was Alison, she was a former Human Resources Administrator I believe. She helped in two ways...she helped to return a little of my motivation, encouraging me to look back towards the film and tv stuff and look in other associated areas as well to get back to working on editing my films as I would like them, getting them online, working on a blog and working on my site in general. I had felt a little guilty about this whilst being unemployed. I had developed an attitude that I should be looking for paid work ahead of all this. Of course this doesn't help my cause in terms of the pursuit of a career in film and tv. Alison also helped with my cv alot, getting it down to two pages and that's no small feet considering it was four pages before that!
The way this is done will vary for everyone but with mine I was able to break things down into time periods these being after my Business Information Technology Degree upto my Film Studies Degree and Whilst I was doing my Film Degrees. She also highlighted the need to emphasis the unpaid work I am doing so as to show that whilst I may be unemployed I'm not sitting around doing nothing. She also pointed me back at the Job Centre and their own Careers Advisor. I would recommend to everyone having any problems with jobs request to see their Careers Advisor.
This next step was even more motivational and was exactly what I needed, what I'd been missing in terms of guidance. Jackie, the Careers Advisor, helped me further with my cv and along with suggesting places to look for further guidance, for job roles and suggesting volunteering for non profit organisations (which I cam currently pursuing) guided me towards the concept of making my job search a full-time job. When she initially said this I was unsure what she meant and/or how to do this. I did have a time-table I worked too but it was just a few hours a week. This is where we get to my initial comment. She explained that whilst I need to do what is required in terms of job hunting for the Job Centre, ie what I had been doing I needed to also consider the stuff like writing a blog, working on my site, working on my editing for the shorts to go on my site and applying for the 'relevant' jobs as well as 'anything that pays' employment and so I drew myself up a 9-5, 5 days a week timetable that covers time for all of the above. I may not always work to my timetable but I always try to do a bit of something relating to it each day. To support that I might just be about on the right track finally I have been doing this for about a month now and last week I got my first interview and it was for a production job. It was for a producers role with a auction channel which whilst it's not where I hope to end up would be excellent and great experience! So keep for fingers crossed and touch any wood to hand...not that wood... :-S
Erm, well the points of this post...I guess to highlight to those in a similar situation there are others out there that understand. To encourage anyone struggling to get a job to get a meeting with the Job Centre Careers Advisor and maybe to offer a little advice myself so people can at least make a start before they see an advisor.
Well when I started this blog I thought I'd comment more on whats going on in the world however I think I've written enough. What I will say though is R.I.P Tony Scott. I am a huge fan of his brother Ridley Scott and he is probably the more 'famous' of the two however, as was pointed out by more than one person in the past week, Tony Scott is an excellent Director and has probably been more productive and at times more successful than Ridley making some awesome films along the way. Everyone knows Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop 2 and Crimson Tide. My own favourites are Spy Game, Man on Fire, The Taking of Pelham 123 and I recently saw Unstoppable which was pretty enjoyable. He certainly knows how to get a performance out of Denzel Washington, probably better than the one for which he won an Oscar in my opinion. Anyway I want to say I of course didn't know him and was surprised by how sad I was to hear of his death. My thoughts go out to his family and I can only hope that someday, if all goes well, I can be half as good a director as him.
