by Ruth Matos
Who has not been in a situation when work opportunities and commitments happen all at the same time? We never know why it is like that. It can be frustrating and it can take time thinking about what to do. As Paulo Coelho wrote on his book The Winner Stands Alone: ‘Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happening at all or by having everything happening all at once’. These are times when we have to evaluate the situation and our career aims and make decisions based on what will add value to us as professionals.
During the past three months at university I was extremely busy with my projects, and unfortunately had to give up a lot of outside opportunities that came along. As I am in the third year of my course I had to give priority to my university projects. Nevertheless I had a hectic schedule and had to be good at managing my time. It was a big learning curve and I was pleased to still be able to take on a few extra projects to build up my professional experience.
The most important project was my dissertation titled ‘O MORRO’ (The Hill). It is about the role of the Favelas (slums) as a predominant part of Brazilian Cinema.
As a Brazilian who has been out of the country for over 20 years I found this subject very exciting. It was a motivation for me to learn about the cinema of my native country.
To be able to understand and write about it, I had to research the history of the Brazilian cinema to the present day as well watched many films that have Favelas on it from different decades. I watched very interesting films from older times with different approaches to Favela then the recent ones, including Barak Obama’s mum favourite film called Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus, 1959).
Another important submission I had this term was a group project, six minutes documentary. Our group had the idea of talking about the Magnificent Seven. The Magnificent Seven was the name given to the seven largest cemeteries in London, built between 1832 and 1841 to increase the capacity of burial grounds due to the growth of population during the industrial revolution. It was another very exciting subject to work on; the contributors were exceptionally keen to talk about their knowledge regarding the cemeteries. Cinematically these cemeteries are so rich that we got enough footage for a feature documentary, and we may decide to work on this during next term.
While working on these two projects for my course, I worked for TV-Bay BroadcastShow at BVE 2013 (Broadcast Video Exhibition), an exhibition that takes place every year in London. It is the British version of NAB in Las Vegas or IBC in Amsterdam.
I worked as a Floor Manager, it was a new experience for me in the broadcasting world and I really enjoyed it. The crew from the Broadcast Show was fantastic; everybody was so kind, friendly and very professional, I learnt lot from them; from managing to technical aspects of a live show. I had the opportunity to operate a Polecam during the live studio shows, and also operated a handheld camera for a while, interviewing some attendees at the exhibition. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Simon Tillyer, Matt Robbins and Jon Pratchett for their exceptional support.
At the moment I am working with my partner Amir Rezazadeh, on a pre-production of a music video for an up coming singer called Mike Simpkins and few other University projects.
