November 2008 Archives
The Drawing for Animators program had it's final session last night. This course has been really important in responding to the needs of the local animation industry. The final session involved some frantic drawing on huge pieces of papers taped to the walls.
It's been a great journey to see all these artists build their skills from sketchy styled drawings to confident animation styled lines.
It's been a great journey to see all these artists build their skills from sketchy styled drawings to confident animation styled lines.
First Axel Rose delivered 'Chinese Democracy' and now Timothy Merks is promising us a new film....
Often when your about to start a new project you find yourself staring at a blank page waiting for the magical muse to appear. Recently through the 'No Straight Jacket' program at FTI we have been building up our skills in creativity by using a wide range of stimuli to get us creatively thinking.
I came across 'Newspaper Black Out Poems', you grab todays newspaper and scan down an article, pick out some words to make an interesting story - and then black out all the other words so only your chosen words remain. while this can be an art form all of it's own, it can also be a stimulus for a greater work. Now you have a strating point for your bigger story.
Take a look at some more.
Source: Austin Kleon
I came across 'Newspaper Black Out Poems', you grab todays newspaper and scan down an article, pick out some words to make an interesting story - and then black out all the other words so only your chosen words remain. while this can be an art form all of it's own, it can also be a stimulus for a greater work. Now you have a strating point for your bigger story.
Take a look at some more.
Source: Austin Kleon
FTI Graduate Taysa white Borgelt has joined the team at BC Productions in Queensland.
The production house and equipment hire company is based in Burleigh and creates TVCs and Corporate Productions.
Congratulations on your new job Taysa!
The production house and equipment hire company is based in Burleigh and creates TVCs and Corporate Productions.
Congratulations on your new job Taysa!
Last week it was a great pleasure to speak at the fifth 'New ways of Working in Vocational Education and Training' Forum in Melbourne.
Here is a brief summary of what I spoke about at the conference. Thanks to everyone who came along, ask questions and hung around to chat afterwards.
Working in a small training organisation is very different to working in a large organisaton, I certainly know this I arrived at FTI from Malaysian based Star Cruises. Going from a commercial department with hunderds of employees to a enterprise RTO which is in a non profit organisation was a huge change. At Star Cruises there were 14 people in my training team, at FTI there are 14 people in the building and 2.6 in the training team.
This year the screen industry is implementing a new training package, in 2009 we will be offering all new updated qualifications. this is a greatdevelopment but the work required to bring in a new training package is enormous.
Our program this year was focussed on contuinual improvement of learning and asssessment processes.
To guide us through the process FTI was lucky to recieve some funding from the WA Department of Education and Training's Professional Development Support Program. This allowed us to bring our trainers and administrators together for a series of emeting to educate them about the new package.
Secondly by being involved in Reframing the Future's Change Agent program I was able to get mentorship and education from a managerial perspective.
To bring about change at FTI we used a theoretical framework that combined the work of John Kotter and the lesser known Behan Tabrizi. Kotter is a well known change theorist, his process invloves several stages Survey the Grounds, Create a Sense of Urgency, Develop a Guiding Team, Communicate the Strategy and Empower others to act, Produce short term wins, create a new culture, and finaly - make it stick.
Tabrizi's change model follwos the same process but it moves much faster, Tabrizi argues that major change can be made to an organisation in just 90 days. The advantage of this being that if there is sudden and major change, there is less opportunity for slip back and laggards and resisters have little option other than assimilation.
This model was appealing, at FTI we have seen even with some smaller changes, like not having snacks at the staff meeting, or getting everyone to wear ID badges, or not automatically making every meeting 1 hour long, we have often quickly slipped back into old habbits. Fast change had a greatdeal of appeal.
As they say, it's not the BIG that eat the SMALL but the FAST that eat the SLOW. Going fast can be a major competitive advantage.
So how does it work when you apply these theoretical models not to big business, but to really small business?
Survey the Grounds
We were lucky at FTI, we have really great, established Business Plans and Strategic Plans that have been developed with our Board, it's a process that everyone has been involved in. this means that everybody already knew in broad terms, where we were heading in the future.
Create a Sense of Urgency
This stage is a little trickier, we were already very busy, over-extended and under funded. Every day at FTI has a list of close to impossible tasks to be completed. There is always someone who is going to miss out, their phone call will not be returned, their email will be unaswered, their request for assistance will be rejected. trying to make something ore urgent than every other urgent thing was a challenge.
Form a Guiding Team
with a small team this stage is almost redundant, there aren't a selection of people to choose from, everyone is the only option. Yet when every task in the building can easily involve nearly everyone, it is more difficult to make this task have priority.
Communicate Strategy and Empower Others to Act
If your in a small team, reword this as 'empower yourself to act' or you will create a situation in a small team where eveyone thinks the other peole will do it.
Produce Short Term Wins
This was one of the most interesting areas for our team. Small wins seem insignificant when your trying to bring about massive change. During our year a client asked us to create a major training program with very little time, we were able to put it together. In a small team making bug change, don't look for small wins, look for big wins or fast wins.
I can;t comment on the final stages of creating a new culture and sustaining it, I don't think our team is quite their yet.
Some of the things we learned along the way;
Here is a brief summary of what I spoke about at the conference. Thanks to everyone who came along, ask questions and hung around to chat afterwards.
Working in a small training organisation is very different to working in a large organisaton, I certainly know this I arrived at FTI from Malaysian based Star Cruises. Going from a commercial department with hunderds of employees to a enterprise RTO which is in a non profit organisation was a huge change. At Star Cruises there were 14 people in my training team, at FTI there are 14 people in the building and 2.6 in the training team.
This year the screen industry is implementing a new training package, in 2009 we will be offering all new updated qualifications. this is a greatdevelopment but the work required to bring in a new training package is enormous.
Our program this year was focussed on contuinual improvement of learning and asssessment processes.
To guide us through the process FTI was lucky to recieve some funding from the WA Department of Education and Training's Professional Development Support Program. This allowed us to bring our trainers and administrators together for a series of emeting to educate them about the new package.
Secondly by being involved in Reframing the Future's Change Agent program I was able to get mentorship and education from a managerial perspective.
To bring about change at FTI we used a theoretical framework that combined the work of John Kotter and the lesser known Behan Tabrizi. Kotter is a well known change theorist, his process invloves several stages Survey the Grounds, Create a Sense of Urgency, Develop a Guiding Team, Communicate the Strategy and Empower others to act, Produce short term wins, create a new culture, and finaly - make it stick.
Tabrizi's change model follwos the same process but it moves much faster, Tabrizi argues that major change can be made to an organisation in just 90 days. The advantage of this being that if there is sudden and major change, there is less opportunity for slip back and laggards and resisters have little option other than assimilation.
This model was appealing, at FTI we have seen even with some smaller changes, like not having snacks at the staff meeting, or getting everyone to wear ID badges, or not automatically making every meeting 1 hour long, we have often quickly slipped back into old habbits. Fast change had a greatdeal of appeal.
As they say, it's not the BIG that eat the SMALL but the FAST that eat the SLOW. Going fast can be a major competitive advantage.
So how does it work when you apply these theoretical models not to big business, but to really small business?
Survey the Grounds
We were lucky at FTI, we have really great, established Business Plans and Strategic Plans that have been developed with our Board, it's a process that everyone has been involved in. this means that everybody already knew in broad terms, where we were heading in the future.
Create a Sense of Urgency
This stage is a little trickier, we were already very busy, over-extended and under funded. Every day at FTI has a list of close to impossible tasks to be completed. There is always someone who is going to miss out, their phone call will not be returned, their email will be unaswered, their request for assistance will be rejected. trying to make something ore urgent than every other urgent thing was a challenge.
Form a Guiding Team
with a small team this stage is almost redundant, there aren't a selection of people to choose from, everyone is the only option. Yet when every task in the building can easily involve nearly everyone, it is more difficult to make this task have priority.
Communicate Strategy and Empower Others to Act
If your in a small team, reword this as 'empower yourself to act' or you will create a situation in a small team where eveyone thinks the other peole will do it.
Produce Short Term Wins
This was one of the most interesting areas for our team. Small wins seem insignificant when your trying to bring about massive change. During our year a client asked us to create a major training program with very little time, we were able to put it together. In a small team making bug change, don't look for small wins, look for big wins or fast wins.
I can;t comment on the final stages of creating a new culture and sustaining it, I don't think our team is quite their yet.
Some of the things we learned along the way;
- It doesn't matter how fast you make your oganisation, your still a cog in a wheel and government departments and other large entities will continue to move at their own speed
- You have to become hyper-organised, reduce time spent on other tasks, embrace time management.
- You have to choose not to do some things, learn to say no.
- Teams are often stuck in mind sets, you have question everything constantly.
- You have to break out of linear processes, multiple things can happen at the same time - they just all have to reach the finish line together.
- Make use of networks, find out what other people are researching and developing, share your stuff and people will share with you.
- In a small organisation you have to be able to swith between micro and macro lenses, look at the big picture and the small details.
- There are great benifits in finding the space to work effectively, whether this is working earlier or later when the phones are not ringing, mobile offices can be very productive.
Earlier this year John Mitchell and Suzy McKenna toured Australia conducting a series of workshops where people involved in their 2007 Reframing the Future program shared their stories of developing successful stories of improving various parts of the national Vocational and Educational Training system.
It was great to be invtied to the Perth forum and share the outcomes of work we have been doing behind the scenes with Central TAFE and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Today I was invited to tell out story again at the Melbourne forum.
A few things struck me during this session, firstly it's hard to tell when a project is over, our project was funded for 2007, but I think the real outcomes of it will be in 2009 and 2010, the seeds we planted in trying to improve Recognised Prior Learning and Recognition of Formal qualifications in the screen industry will really start to grow.
I was also amazed that people in the wider training world do not ecognise storytelling as one of the most powerful learning exchanges that can occur. For a conferecne full of training professionals there is a fair amount of 'death by powerpoint' going on - so many presenters would communicate so much more if they just turned off their laptops and talked to the people in the room.
John's forum has all been built around sharing stories and anaysing the messages within. It's really effective.
Finally John presented a list of qualities that seem to be representing the effective training organisation of the future.
They were;
If you have a training company working for you, do they do all these things? if not they might be falling behind the times.
It was great to be invtied to the Perth forum and share the outcomes of work we have been doing behind the scenes with Central TAFE and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Today I was invited to tell out story again at the Melbourne forum.
A few things struck me during this session, firstly it's hard to tell when a project is over, our project was funded for 2007, but I think the real outcomes of it will be in 2009 and 2010, the seeds we planted in trying to improve Recognised Prior Learning and Recognition of Formal qualifications in the screen industry will really start to grow.
I was also amazed that people in the wider training world do not ecognise storytelling as one of the most powerful learning exchanges that can occur. For a conferecne full of training professionals there is a fair amount of 'death by powerpoint' going on - so many presenters would communicate so much more if they just turned off their laptops and talked to the people in the room.
John's forum has all been built around sharing stories and anaysing the messages within. It's really effective.
Finally John presented a list of qualities that seem to be representing the effective training organisation of the future.
They were;
- Innovation
- Entrepreneurial
- Changing Cultures
- Expaning Markets
- Improving Product Quality
- Managing Change
If you have a training company working for you, do they do all these things? if not they might be falling behind the times.
Professional Development and Training Manager Graeme watson is atending the New Ways of Working in VET Forum in Melbourne.
Mark Harris from Southbank Institute of Technology is taking about his change management project and the communication strategy they used. These include use of an itranet, broadcast announcements, pod casts, team meetings, a scrolling live update on their projects intranet site, bookmark flyers, personalised emails, information bulletins, change agent forums and roadsow presentations.
It just shows how important multiple channels of communication are in an organisation when your trying to change something.
Mark Harris from Southbank Institute of Technology is taking about his change management project and the communication strategy they used. These include use of an itranet, broadcast announcements, pod casts, team meetings, a scrolling live update on their projects intranet site, bookmark flyers, personalised emails, information bulletins, change agent forums and roadsow presentations.
It just shows how important multiple channels of communication are in an organisation when your trying to change something.
The New Ways of Working in VET forum is on in Melbourne for the next two days. FTI's Professional Development and Training Manager Graeme Watson will be posting updates from the forum from the sessions.
Australia's Vocational Training system is moving fast and cnstantly changing, and learning needs in the screen industry are at the forefront of this rapid change. This forum is a great chance for screen industry trainers to share their experiences but also a great opportunity to hear about innovation in a wide range of industries.
Australia's Vocational Training system is moving fast and cnstantly changing, and learning needs in the screen industry are at the forefront of this rapid change. This forum is a great chance for screen industry trainers to share their experiences but also a great opportunity to hear about innovation in a wide range of industries.
How do you explain this... it's a writing program that has some built in settings that stop you getting distracted or procrastinating... on it's gentle setting if you stop writing before your alotted time is up - or your word limit is reached, the program plays an annoying sound - on it's highter setting, if you stop writing it starts deleting what you have written.
More here
Often when people think of animation the first think that comes to mind in something very electronic, and very precise.
But animation can also be organic, earthy and full of textures. Take a look at Joseph Mann's short films that utilise paper cut-outs and hand drawn images that are broght to life through stop motion animation.
Joseph Mann
The Rose D'Or Festival have added new categories into their competition for 2009.
Both the new categories are interesting;
Best Multi-Platform: growing recognition that media is changing anf there is true inovation occurring with programs that branch out from traditional television.
and more interesting,
Best Pitch Pilot: There are quite of lot of these that get made around the world and never see the light of day. Have the Rose D'Or just created an enormous life boat for failed projects... SBS turned it down but then it went on to win... of course successful projects would be eligable too.
Both the new categories are interesting;
Best Multi-Platform: growing recognition that media is changing anf there is true inovation occurring with programs that branch out from traditional television.
and more interesting,
Best Pitch Pilot: There are quite of lot of these that get made around the world and never see the light of day. Have the Rose D'Or just created an enormous life boat for failed projects... SBS turned it down but then it went on to win... of course successful projects would be eligable too.
Increasingly the process of creativity is becoming more of a focus in the screen industry. Our goal is not just to teach good technical skills, how to use lights, camera and microphones, but also how to tell good stories, new stories and find interesting ways of telling them.
One of my favorite books about the subject of creativity is Twyla Tharps's "The Creative Habit' (Simon and Schuster, 2003). In her book Tharp notes,
Bethoven lived in Viena for 32 year, but he never bought a house, he moved over 40 times, always seeking a change in scenery.
Recently in our 'No Straight Jacket' we have been exploring the effects of different stimuli on our creative processes. What happens to a story when you add a new ingedient into the creative mix, what happens when particular music is played, or you try to tell the story without words, or from a specific viewpoint.
Australian film is often criticised for films not having gone through enough drafts of the scripting process, but maybe the real problem is they haven't gone through enough variations in the scripting process.
Earlier this year UK televison Writer Rob Sherman visited Western Australia and shared an interesting story about the development of his episode 'Dalek' for the first season of the revived 'Doctor Who'. Shearman had many months to write the script, and continually sent in different and improved versions to the show's producers. Sometime a new draft would move the story forwards, but a later draft might introduce new challenges, problems and obstacles - which would in turn require yet another draft.
What was interesting in this process, was even though Draft number 5 might have been filmable, they still had a stab at Draft number 6, and if that caused some obstacles they would take on Draft number 7. Sherman shared at one point a draft did not even contain the icnic Dalek - the central point of the comission, but if it made for a better story - this was not a problem.
Music is very different to film, music can involve and be re-interpreted and remade in a way that visual media does not get treated. Last night I was playing with my i-tunes program creating a playlist of Ryan Adams, songs, my selection of his Greatest Hits. I hadn;t noticed before but Adams has recorded several of his tracks multiple times - often creating more laid back versions than their original releases.
Film of course also gets remade - but how many remakes are truly changing the nature of the story and it's meanings?
So if your strugling for inspiration, or stuck with a project maybe moving house physically might help, or moving house metaphorically could open up the doors of creativity - taking your project and putting it in a completely new place.
...and the Dalek did make it back into Rob Sherman's script.
One of my favorite books about the subject of creativity is Twyla Tharps's "The Creative Habit' (Simon and Schuster, 2003). In her book Tharp notes,
Bethoven lived in Viena for 32 year, but he never bought a house, he moved over 40 times, always seeking a change in scenery.
Recently in our 'No Straight Jacket' we have been exploring the effects of different stimuli on our creative processes. What happens to a story when you add a new ingedient into the creative mix, what happens when particular music is played, or you try to tell the story without words, or from a specific viewpoint.
Australian film is often criticised for films not having gone through enough drafts of the scripting process, but maybe the real problem is they haven't gone through enough variations in the scripting process.
Earlier this year UK televison Writer Rob Sherman visited Western Australia and shared an interesting story about the development of his episode 'Dalek' for the first season of the revived 'Doctor Who'. Shearman had many months to write the script, and continually sent in different and improved versions to the show's producers. Sometime a new draft would move the story forwards, but a later draft might introduce new challenges, problems and obstacles - which would in turn require yet another draft.
What was interesting in this process, was even though Draft number 5 might have been filmable, they still had a stab at Draft number 6, and if that caused some obstacles they would take on Draft number 7. Sherman shared at one point a draft did not even contain the icnic Dalek - the central point of the comission, but if it made for a better story - this was not a problem.
Music is very different to film, music can involve and be re-interpreted and remade in a way that visual media does not get treated. Last night I was playing with my i-tunes program creating a playlist of Ryan Adams, songs, my selection of his Greatest Hits. I hadn;t noticed before but Adams has recorded several of his tracks multiple times - often creating more laid back versions than their original releases.
Film of course also gets remade - but how many remakes are truly changing the nature of the story and it's meanings?
So if your strugling for inspiration, or stuck with a project maybe moving house physically might help, or moving house metaphorically could open up the doors of creativity - taking your project and putting it in a completely new place.
...and the Dalek did make it back into Rob Sherman's script.
Last week a blog post by Jonathan Jones at THE GUARDIAN reflected on a scene from the film 'Control' where Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis is working in the Uneployment Office and asks a client why they need to sign on to the dole. Jones accuratley notes that back in the late 70's in England they would have asked, lots of people were unemployed, you didn't need to explain.
Does high employment work better for the arts, is the unemployment benifit often a subsiduary form of arts funding? Will a global financial crisis and a failing resources sector actual be a welcomed development in the arts community? Just before the state election the Department of Culture and the Arts in Western Australia held a series of discussions about what WA artists need, each session was led by a number of speakers sharing there personal veiws before a whole room discussion kicked in, was it ABC arts critic Marcus Westbury who joked, ' Forget the boom, bring on the bust'.
It's true, WA's thriving resources economy has been highlighted as one of the reasons that some arts programs are falling short of their expectations. In a time poor society, where increasingly people work in the north-west or have to work in a dead end job to afford an enormous WA rent - is it still reasonable to ask them to find time to take part in skills development programs and artistic endevours that provide no financial reward?
Should we be training animators to be character animators for a future creative animation industry, or should we be getting them to focus on their skills at providing visualisations for mining sites? Should the training of a filmmaker be focussed on storytelling, documentaries and short films - or should it be we take a stronger focus on corporate films?
Would less of a finacial boom be a good thing for the arts?
Does high employment work better for the arts, is the unemployment benifit often a subsiduary form of arts funding? Will a global financial crisis and a failing resources sector actual be a welcomed development in the arts community? Just before the state election the Department of Culture and the Arts in Western Australia held a series of discussions about what WA artists need, each session was led by a number of speakers sharing there personal veiws before a whole room discussion kicked in, was it ABC arts critic Marcus Westbury who joked, ' Forget the boom, bring on the bust'.
It's true, WA's thriving resources economy has been highlighted as one of the reasons that some arts programs are falling short of their expectations. In a time poor society, where increasingly people work in the north-west or have to work in a dead end job to afford an enormous WA rent - is it still reasonable to ask them to find time to take part in skills development programs and artistic endevours that provide no financial reward?
Should we be training animators to be character animators for a future creative animation industry, or should we be getting them to focus on their skills at providing visualisations for mining sites? Should the training of a filmmaker be focussed on storytelling, documentaries and short films - or should it be we take a stronger focus on corporate films?
Would less of a finacial boom be a good thing for the arts?
