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New uploads – showreel, two sketches

Judith Allen — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:21:49 +0000

Having just joined vimeo (username jaaed), I’m using the handy embedding feature to self-promote. Which of course is what blogs are for…. sort of.

So here’s my new showreel, updated from the previous to include my graduation films from the NFTS and some of the animations I’ve worked on at the school:

Editing Showreel Jan 2009 from Judith Allen on Vimeo.

… and here are two of my favourite sketches from my most recent editing project, ‘TV or Not TV’:

TV or not TV – ‘Corporate Woman’ from Judith Allen on Vimeo.

TV or not TV – ‘The Facts of Life’ from Judith Allen on Vimeo.

End of an era, and the freelance fear

Judith Allen — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:11:24 +0000

Barring the usual paperwork, signing-offs and graduation itself, my time at the NFTS is just about over. The cafetiere and coffee bean grinder have been taken home, the relevant exports have all been done – and copies made for me to be able to advise remotely on any unclear points. The animation is still going via Avid, as each shot is worked on seperately in the animator’s After Effects and then exported in HD whenever we need to see the entire film or a sequence of shots, but I now have that on my own MacBook Pro and we can FTP new material whilst it’s still being completed.

So now comes the fear. The freelance fear, of course. I’d like to think that by having a website, showreel of sorts, and profiles on the usual networking and jobseeking websites that I’m getting a good start on the background self-promotion, but as just about everyone says – it’s the contacts that count. I’m certainly building them up – in no small part thanks to the NFTS, but they mostly seem to be the type which could be more useful in a few years’ time once I’ve had a bit of experience. Agencies all want broadcast credits, and there’s always the danger of getting stuck in a genre which isn’t where I ultimately want to be.

The first step certainly seems to be the hardest right now. But by continuing to work on my online presence whilst keeping my eyes open and monitoring job-seeking and professional development websites, I’m keeping calm and not worrying too much….. yet.

Site updates

Judith Allen — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:00:47 +0000

Over the last few days, during the quiet(er) moments, I’ve been trying to do some work on my website. Some of it’s not visible, some of it’s very small indeed – for example, the new favicon which I’m actually quite happy with:

Some of it however is fairly significant. I’ve uploaded some clips to my previous work page (which can be no longer than 10% of the total film running time according to school rules – it’s a festivals and rights thing as I understand it), added my most recent fiction short, and added a ‘current projects‘ page to the blog along with status updates – once they get going in a major way I may break them up into seperate pages per project depending on how much it’s possible to write on them.

I hope to also get a flashy-cutty ’showreel to music’ thing up to just quickly show the types of project that I’ve been involved in, but I’m still waiting to hear back from the school on that as the additional lengths of clips would take it over 10% – although a bare minimum of original sound remains. I’m not sure how much people look at that sort of thing professionally, but it’s probably more accessible to my family and friends who don’t work in the industry.