Production

Drum roll please…

The management team at G Media are all keyed up at the moment as our fearless leader Garion Hall is about to unveil our revised and super charged Performance Review Policy.  Garion has spent a billion hours, give or take, researching, measuring, benchmarking; you name it he’s done it and all in the name of accurately measuring and recognising G Median’s game-changing performance.

I had a sneak peak at it the other day it looks pretty amazing!! It made me think about my role as a manager. A manager’s most important and most difficult job is to manage people. You must lead, motivate, inspire, and encourage them. Sometimes you will have to hire, fire and discipline employees.

People don’t really work for companies; they work for managers. To the extent that you can be a good manager, you can keep employees, keep them happy, and reduce the costs associated with employee turnover. In the process, you should make your own job easier.

Employees are one of a company’s largest expenses, unlike other costs (buildings, machinery, technology, etc.) employees as assets are highly volatile.   Managing performance is not always easy, as there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to managing people and their performance.  So as a manager how do I ensure I am getting the best from each individual…??  Well I’m no leading authority but this is what I have learnt in practice, through observation but mostly reflection.. Lots of cringe worthy reflection!

Make sure your people have everything they need to do their job well.

By hell or high water, you have to get them what they need to do the job, and do it right. This includes:

• Proper training
• Proper tools
• Properly defined position descriptions and KPI’s.
• Well documented processes and procedures
• Adequate and proper motivation
• Trust in you as their manager (and yes, they absolutely need this in order to do the job well. It’s not optional.)
• Appreciation/Morale

Get everything that impedes your people from doing their job out of the way.

This is often the most difficult for me.  It’s not glamorous or fun work. Slogging through this stuff takes lots of time and energy. I know it leaves me drained, but, it needs to be done. What to look for when you are clearing a path:

• Old processes and procedures that are no longer needed
• Non-productive meetings
• Work that is not related to the core mission of your team
• Lack of communication.
• Unrealistic expectations from customers, other management, or even the employees themselves.

Make sure your people are performing, and make sure they know you’re all over it…
Once you’ve got the first two sorted, it’s time for some accountability. The key here is defining “job well done” in a way that can be objectively measured and inspected. Your people should know:

• What is being measured
• Why it’s being measured
• That you expect them to uphold a certain level of performance
• You will be regularly inspecting for that level of performance
• What steps you will take if that performance level is not met
• What is offered if they exceed that performance level

Phew!!  A lot to take in right..? Hang in there still a tiny bit more.  Employees are responsible for their own performance within the team. As their manager, I am accountable to our (awesome) board of directors ensuring results in my department, concrete measurable results.

Everyone in the workplace has an important part to play in organisational performance. Good organisational performance is the result of high quality functioning by the individuals within it.  Go Team!!

Tags: G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, management, motivation, performance review, staff, staff management
Posted in Featured, General, Production

Self confidence building for women starts with building self esteem

As the Production Manager at G Media I spend most of my day working with young women, whether it is staff or models.   As part of my induction I spent many weeks with Garion Hall discussing and learning about the many issues young women face in today’s society and how they take their toll on self confidence.

G Media takes its responsibility to women very seriously.  We collaborate with our models and staff to create an environment which supports the development of individual self confidence so that they in turn can make good healthy decisions for themselves.  Over the last 10 years Garion Hall, CEO, G Media, has worked extensively with social researchers, health workers and local women’s support groups to better understand what we can do every day at G Media to empower woman who value who they are, feel confident and believe in themselves.

We believe that once a woman recognises her-self worth and confirms that she is a marvelous achievement then her feelings and trust in her own self worth will soar.  Confidence comes from a different place inside ourselves, we carry ourselves differently.

All of our experiences in life are opportunities to learn and connect more deeply with ourselves. The more we connect to ourselves, the more healing we do. When a situation makes us feel angry, sad, sick to our stomach, fearful or off centre in any way, our body expresses this discomfort by a physical contraction. This is a signal for us to reconnect with ourselves.

I love it when I see this reconnection in the young women we work with, and they love it too. When young women start believing in themselves and replacing negative thoughts with satisfaction and confidence, their whole life changes. They are no longer making decisions for the wrong reasons; the decisions they make are decisions that are good for them. I get to watch their appearance actually change too. They stand straighter, they walk with a sense of sureness, and they speak with confidence, because they are.

As a woman, there is nothing more inspiring to me than a young woman learning how to stand in her power or a woman standing strong in her power. I feel so lucky in my life to be able to witness these miraculous changes in the women I work with everyday. It reminds me how big love is.

Tags: confidence, G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, self esteem
Posted in Blogs, Featured, General, Marketing, Production

Californian Giants

I recently saw National Geographic Magazine’s Top Ten Photographs of 2009 aired on cable television here in Australia and whilst all ten were breathtaking images in their own right, the image that took the number one placing truly, truly took my breath away.

I’ve spent a decent amount of time in California and I love anything with a distinct flavour of nature, so why oh why had I not heard of the Californian Redwoods?

Michael “Nick” Nichols, National Geographic photographer and the genius that took the number one image, spent 21 days in the Redwood forests trying to photograph these mammoth trees in a way that would evoke the sense of awe one is left with after seeing the trees in the flesh. If memory serves me correctly, Nichols in fact spent a year going back to the Redwood forests trying to figure out how to adequately photograph a 300 foot tree, with little success and many images of tree trunks or tree branches and the like.

Nichols and his team eventually came up with the ingenious plan of building a dolly to hoist three Canon EOS1 DSLR cameras side-by-side, up to the 100 foot wide crown of this gigantic tree, each camera shooting a frame, then dropping the dolly down three metres and repeating the process to the base of the tree. Seamlessly stitched together, the final image is made up of 84 individual frames and the result is phenomenal.

To our fearless leader, Mr. Garion Hall, woodworker extraordinaire… MDF all the way!

Watch the video about the photograph (and three others) here!

Tags: canon, G Media, Garion Hall, National Geographic, photography
Posted in Blogs, Production

I want…

On the quiet, because everyone here at G Media is a Canon user, I want a Nikon D3x!

Released back in December 2008, the 36 x 23.9 mm CMOS sensor provides a resolution of 24.5 megapixels imaging area equivalent to 35mm film. Compared with its baby brother, the D3, it’s a massive jump up in resolution, though D3x users do have to accept a smaller range of sensitivity (ISO 100 to 1600 extendable to ISO 50 to 6400). But hey, who wants to shoot sports when you can shoot detailed work that includes beautiful women?

The only downfall I guess is the price. At first release they were around US$8,000 and haven’t dropped too far off that mark as yet. You can pick one up on eBay for around US$7,000… Yes, I suppose some may argue that is the price of a small car but then they’re probably not a photographer! In the grand scheme of things where photography is concerned that’s quite a reasonable price to spend on a camera… If anyone out there is in the mood to buy me a US$22,000 present, I won’t knock a Hasselblad H3D-39II, another medium format digital slr. I think you see my point.

As for the D3x, it’s a sure thing I’ll be picking one up soon…

What are the chances of converting the G Medians too? I say a Hasselblad for all! The finance department say no.

Tags: camera, canon, digital slr, hasselblad, nikon, photography, Production
Posted in Blogs, Production

Ever wondered… Who really makes a film?

Have you ever watched the end credits of a film and wondered who all those people are and what they all do? Clearly, there are many people behind the scenes that make it possible for any film production to come together.

Here at G Media, I’m the resident Producer on our large scale productions and thought I’d take a minute to explain the roles of some of the key staff that work on such projects.

While we may not be as big as 20^th Century Fox (yet), the functions are more or less the same.

Producer: A film producer creates the conditions for making a film. The producer initiates, coordinates, supervises, and controls matters such as raising funding, hiring key personnel, and arranging for distributors. The producer is involved throughout all phases of the film-making process from development to completion of a project. The producer has overall control of a project and can terminate the director, but the director actually makes the film.

Director: A film director is a person who visualizes the screenplay, controlling a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects, while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of his or her vision. In some cases, film directors do not have absolute creative control. The director can also be selected by the producer. The producer in this case very likely has veto power over everything from the script itself to the final editing of the film, often in anything from slight to extreme opposition to the director’s vision.

Executive producer: An executive producer oversees the financial, administrative and creative aspects of production, though not technical aspects. In smaller companies or independent projects, may be synonymous with creator/writer. On a major production this role is usually filled by a representative or CEO of the film studio although the title may be given as an honorarium to a major investor.

Art Director: Various artists may create or develop specific parts of an art piece or scene but an art director unifies the entire vision. In particular, the art director is in charge of the overall visual appearance and how it communicates visually, stimulates moods, contrasts features, and psychologically appeals to a target audience. The art director makes decisions about visual elements used, what artistic style to use, and when to use motion. At times, an art director is ultimately responsible for solidifying the vision of the collective imagination while resolving conflicting agendas and inconsistencies between the various individual inputs.

Tags: cinema, director, film, movie, producer, Production
Posted in Blogs, Production

Safety boots

Working for a medium to large-sized company as I do at G Media means that there are systems in place to help you avoid injury. Examples of these are the first aid kit. The injury log book. My favourite, the safety boot. Large boots with steel caps in the toes to prevent toe breakage when one drops heavy expensive stuff, a must have in construction sites and film sets alike. Mine have a cosy home under my work-desk when not in use – I like to pair mine with hot coloured stockings and shorts. Lookin’ fiiiine! But then this is not a construction site, just the home office for G Media

Tags: Production, safety, safety boots, set, steel cap
Posted in Blogs, Production

G Media Lighting tip number 1

Ah, lighting. A concept that I am still in the process of getting my head fully around. Pretty important for shooting video, though I believe the stills side of things relies heavily on it as well. Garion Hall from G Media taught me about it like this: To break it down, for basic lighting in a video situation, what I do is create a big soft source of light pointed at the subject on a 45 degree angle from the camera, (we will refer to him as Key), and maybe add a couple more of the guys for some fill or back light. Of course depending on the mood you’re going for this may well not be the case, but for argument’s sake let’s just say it is. You’ve got yourself some nice soft light which creates those curvy shapes and the depth on the subject that is so desirable.

Tags: camera, lighting, Production, soft light, video
Posted in Blogs, Production

Outdoor audio fashion pieces

For shooting outdoors, a wind-sock is a great little knick-knack for eliminating unwanted wind noises. If it’s raining, the wind-sock has its own little cover which soaks up the rain and rain-related noise. However, you probably wouldn’t want to shoot in the rain for risk of water-logging the camera. (One of our shooters came up with a great idea to combat this – garbage bags! With appropriate holes for lens and mic, it made for a stylish little accessory. She liked it so much and lacked her own raincoat she whacked one on herself!)

Tags: audio, outdoors, Production, raincoat, video, wind sock
Posted in Blogs, Production