Down to Business

Much of my focus in the past week has been on my preparation for interviews. As the Business Symposium was fast approaching, I had to ensure my nerves wouldn't get the best of me during my interviews with professionals. The event, this year, was hosted through Zoom, but it was still quite successful in allowing me to get useful experience and practice interviewing with professionals. Despite a few technical difficulties, I had two interviews that went exceptionally well, considering my initial nervousness about the whole ordeal.

My first interview was with a food and beverage sales manager, which was quite different from the creative field in which I am pursuing. Nonetheless, the conversation flowed quite smoothly, minus a few mistakes on my end. Through this first interview, I realized how conversational the experience is supposed to be. In previous interviews, such as in my professional communications class two years ago, it felt much more like an interrogation. However, I was also not nearly as well prepared as I was this time around.

The only critical commentary I received from my first interview was that I did sound quite scripted and needed to work on being more conversational. I had a few notes pulled up for some basic interview questions that might be asked, and I got caught up a few times trying to remember what I had written. Other than that, my first interview with a professional this year went exceptionally well and gave me a boost of confidence.

My second interview was with another ISM student, Ms. Laiba Ali. I was naturally a bit more at ease for my interview with her because she is a fellow student, but I believe getting over my initial nerves with my first interview helped as well. This interview went very smoothly and was quite a bit more conversational than my first. We are both pursuing a creative field, and perhaps it was because she had worked with my older brother, who was in ISM a few years ago, that I felt a bit more at ease and felt like I could relate to her and speak more comfortably. Her feedback on my performance was very positive, and this experience certainly allowed me to feel far more confident in my abilities when it comes to professionally interviewing people.

Besides the Business Symposium, I played around with a few different grades for some footage I took while hiking in the past week. I found myself short on time with school assignments beginning to pile, so instead of going into an in-depth study of color grading like I originally planned, I took to Adobe Rush and studied a few of the built-in presets on a piece of footage I took while hiking over the weekend. For this blog, I have exported the same still from a video with each grade applied at 50% intensity for a fair comparison.

Original

SL Fuji

The Cinematic grade appears to emphasize yellow and orange tones while maintaining some blues. A defining feature of this grade is certainly the harsh contrast. The shadowed areas of the foliage towards either side of the still are so dark that the forms are ambiguous. If I were to use this grade on this piece of footage for a project, I would make a few adjustments to offset this, but the point of this experiment was for me to learn about different grades and how it affects the mood of a clip. Overall, the Cinematic grade certainly achieves an aesthetic appeal with strong orange and yellow tones that contrast with blue tones. I am not sure this grade is suitable for a forest scene like this, but perhaps on an open landscape or sunset shot, it would achieve a better effect.

The Film grade creates a nostalgic feeling right away. By softening the contrast and highlighting the lighter blue hues of the sky accompanied by an overall yellow tone, this filter creates a soft and reminiscent mood. I would use this type of a grade for nature or forest scenes as it balances the colors fairly well and gives the still a very soft look, which I love.

SL Kodak appears to achieve a similar effect as the Film grade, save for increased contrast and brighter highlights. The shadows are noticeably darker with this still, and I think this grade is useful if you are looking for a slightly more dramatic, but still realistic look. This grade is sort of like the mid-point between the Film and Cinematic grades.

Overall, my favorite grade is probably SL Kodak because it gives a little extra contrast and gives the still a bit more depth than Film, but it is not too dramatic like the Cinematic grade for this particular piece of footage.

As I begin contacting professionals in my field in search of a mentor this week, I am hoping to further plan and storyboard for a short film idea I had earlier this week. Additionally, I will try, for the first time, to execute a green screen effect. I do not own a green screen, but I do have a purple wall. Hopefully, that will be enough to serve the purpose of a solid color that I can edit out...I suppose I will never know until I try!