Penny at the edit suite

Just back from an exhausting day with producer Tim Paine at ECP Video!  Yesterday was an amazing day that went brilliantly well, delivering my Insights on Leadership Day with The Living Leader team at the ICC in Birmingham (incidentally for any of you wanting to run a company event I cannot recommend them highly enough as the service was truly exceptional), and having started the day at 4am and getting to bed at 11pm I was pretty tired before I began this morning.  Tim then put me through my paces filming, filming and then some more filming!  The make-up required considerably more than normal application this morning for sure!

I am lucky in that, as I know my material really well, I can mostly do this without notes and on the first take – not quite so fortunate today.  Just when I thought I had got it right, the pernickety Tim comes up with some excessively irritating comment or question that means I have to do the whole thing again.  Panic very nearly set in when, having already recorded a very acceptable 40 minutes, he told me he might have lost the sound which would have required doing the whole thing again.  The truth is he was just keeping me on my toes while he was trying out a new and very upmarket camera. Phew!

I am actually really excited about doing this as we are working together to get a really great product on the market – well, naturally I think so – and one that I truly believe is very necessary for newly appointed managers.  I mean we all know how most managers are promoted don’t we?  Go home on Friday as an engineer/a salesperson/a technician and come back on Monday as a Manager, with osmosis having occurred over the weekend to give a new manager skill set!  It might be years later before they are given the benefit of any management training.  So – a ‘how to’ product will be hot off the press – or out of the film studio – and will be ready very imminently.  Watch this space!

However, having thought it would be completed today, my hopes were dashed when, after firing countless questions at me and having my head reeling, he threw me out of the door telling me I was definitely slowing down too much and had better return tomorrow for another go!  You can imagine my excitement at yet another session of doing something I most definitely do not enjoy – staring into a camera that gives you no feedback and being totally animated about your subject (which, anyone who knows me can verify to be a truth), with no audience response and fearing the outcome of how you are going to look on screen.  What joy!  I can also live in hope that Tim will be somewhat gentler with me tomorrow and I will not need to wear quite so much make-up!

PF Logo 100