Reflection on how I fulfilled the Professional Skills unit

I feel that I fulfilled the Professional Skills unit by meeting the core requirements of the unit; namely to identify a target market, an appropriate employer to invite to our degree show and also by scheduling tasks and managing my time.  In addition to that, I have also gone out of my way to research areas that are not immediately mentioned within the brief, most prominently, Intellectual Property, which I have become increasingly concerned about and I took it upon myself to research various forms of licensing and in particular, Creative Commons licensing to ensure that our work gets distributed freely and fairly, as intended, and also to ensure that we will get credited for our work by whoever uses it.

I also responded to this unit by incorporating some of my other skills, as well as the CG skills, particularly Web Design.  Web design is something that I have become keen about since the Christmas holidays and I have acquired knowledge and experience in this area.  I decided to apply my experience of web design to build a web site from scratch to promote the Cat and Rat film and contribute to the marketing of our film.  Many people on the course were impressed with the quality of my web site and as a result, a lot of them approached me for advice on building their own film web sites, such as web hosting, buying domains, etc.

Along with applying outside skills and knowledge, I feel I fulfilled this unit by considering and documenting how I market myself and my professional image (i.e. contact cards, web site, etc) and how I communicate and engage with fellow professionals, particularly through trying to contact people from industry.  I also fulfilled this unit by considering my time management skills and how I manage my own work to fit in with the work of other team members.

As part of the group that I am working in, this unit helped us to manage team work, such as scheduling work and working within a production pipeline.  The Professional Skills unit also helped to highlight the importance of meetings with the team, as well as communication and transparency between all team members, particularly when sharing work and assigning tasks.  Before the beginning of this unit, there were numerous issues within the group and a few communication problems, but we managed to resolve all of these using what we had learnt from Professional Skills and by organising meetings to go over work.