On May 29th 2024, I wrote the first edition of my series: the workspace.
To address one thing off the bat, when I said I’d write this quarterly, I actually meant to write bi-annually. I must have just forgotten what quarterly meant at the time.
Since that first submission, much has changed within the workspace. I currently reside in the same place, however my workspace area has expanded somewhat vastly. Firstly, I have access to a co-working space in Islington, 20 minutes away from where I live. They call themselves Loom Club.
These guys opened up to the public this summer and have an absolutely beautiful space to work from. Personally, I’ve experienced a range of benefits, but the main ones have been adding structure to my week, and being able to have a space to give more dedication to work.
Work at home has its benefits, but after enough time I learn to loathe it. When my bed is too close and everything I need is all around me, it becomes too easy to walk away from responsibilities and take the day off. Needless to say the isolation at times can also be down-right horrific.
With the Loom co-working space, I’m out the house from 8.30am and back by 5.30pm. Having a space dedicated to my job, a place for any zoom calls with a professional backdrop, and I have a space to be social. Turns out, an office is great for my productivity… who would have guessed?
Another benefit, one of the owners has an absolutely fantastic dog who I’ve grown great acquaintance with.
In addition to this, I have access to a studio-space I regularly use now. Aara Creative have been fantastic and accommodating for my needs for photography and video-content. Places like that become my happy-space and I absolutely love working there. Below are a few photos I took this summer using the space, some professional and one for personal vanity.
Having all this, alongside my part-time job, has led my week to generally be structured as so: Monday is for admin, strategy and general work hygiene tasks (storage management, cleaning etc.), while Tuesday and Wednesday tend to be the days I get stuck into the core work and tasks. Thursdays and Fridays are dedicated to my second job, but if I need to, the Loom space is a brilliant place to go after my second-job to get stuck into any outstanding tasks that need doing. I’m incredibly grateful to these guys, if you can’t tell.
For my assessment of how well the workspace is going for me, I’m feeling less inclined to be so strict on the efficiency, function, maintenance criteria and instead just open discussion for what is working well at the moment for the needs of my work, and what things need to improved in the face of challenges I am currently up against. Loosely following the framework I outlined in the first volume.
Here is the workspace, volume 2. Dated 27th November 2024.
What’s Changed?
Other than the aforementioned space changes, I have a new piece of equipment.
As a videographer, I’ve been very keen to get into the Sony Cinema camera range. I’ve been told the FX3 is a handheld powerhouse that is perfect for beautiful looking footage. It brings with it new challenges but allows me to make absolutely beautiful and high-quality footage that brings that extra edge to my products and services.
The new piece of equipment is not the FX3, I absolutely do not have the money to afford that.
Instead, I have forked out to buy the Sony A7iii. A full-frame camera that records in 4K and is much more modern than my old Canon 5D mkii, it felt like a great way to get my foot on the Sony ladder.
Only after I took it home did I realise there’s a difference between the A7iii and the A7Siii, however the ability to film in 4K and have a continuous Auto-Focus has already made my life incredibly easier. It has also been a great way to learn my way around the Sony camera products for when the FX3 does finally arrive into my possession.
I face some issues however, namely the lens is troublesome. I love my Sigma 50mm 1.4, but it’s fit for my Canon. Ideally the 35mm Sigma lens would turn this Sony Camera into much more of the weapon I would want it to be, however that looks to be another £750 that I don’t have the time to fork out on.
Filming in S-Log2 has also been a good learning experience. Colour Grading beforehand was somewhat foreign to me, I could certainly do it, I just didn’t have the technical know-how as much.
So as a result, my colour grading knowledge has improved a whole-lot, and trying a bit of DaVinci Resolve has been great to understanding colour on a stronger level. So DaVinci Studio has appeared on my radar for the future, Adobe is still my greatest ally however.
It was a great tool in producing my documentary for Jess Hands.
In terms of my room, there has been a shake-up in organisation. I took one day to just take a more taxonomical approach towards where I keep my items to improve efficiency when I work from home.
Labelling has become a big thing, and namely where I keep my wires. Often I have every wire under the sun, just no knowledge of where I kept it. I have also made a sheet listing where everything should live at any given time. At times it has been great in keeping my room in check, but the problem of living in your room is that life gets in the way at times. Sometimes keeping that room in check is more difficult.
I did try and sell some items also, one successfully and one less-so. My Canon Powershot G9X has been sold for a price I was pretty happy with, which helped an absolute ton.
Selling my Mac mini M1 was a lot more difficult. Facebook Marketplace is an interesting place, as I came to discover. I certainly discovered and spoke with some real characters, and while I learned a lot of some people (at times more than I needed to know), the main takeaway was that, when I bought that computer, I should have spent more money on RAM than internal storage.
I eventually gave up with Facebook Marketplace and decided this can be better used for my own benefit with work. As video demands get larger, my MacBook can only take so much. The Mac mini, therefore, has found a great place in the arsenal as both a render engine and something I can hook up to my TV for streaming. I didn’t make the money, but hopefully this will prove a super-effective companion in the coming year.
Those are the key changes, aimed at largely improving efficiency and work-flows as the work picks up and storage becomes more intensive. No doubt the next changes to come will be to buy more harddrives for the work coming up. The Samsung 870 EVO 1TB drives I have currently still do a great job, but they are already meeting their limit as far as extra storage.
I also need a better way to store them, I’ve kept them in the old Canon Powershot case for protection, but that will need to change soon enough.
Where Are The Faults?
Digitally we’re still having troubles.
My attempts to use the Google Drive for a centralised digital cloud storage space haven’t been as effective as I might have liked. I put this largely down to the fact that I’m using the same google account I used in the past, so old files that were shared with me during school, university and other work still exist there.
I’ve not put in the efforts to remove them, and I’m somewhat loathed to.
It has, however, continued to be a great space to interact with clients when sharing videos, so it’s not to waste.
That being said, some subscriptions are going to waste, namely Frame.io, which is an unbelievably fantastic tool I’m underutilising. This is partly because I haven’t been involved in any large-scale projects since the YouTube work.
However, I definitely need to build a digital workflow that incorporates frame.io as a necessary tool for client interaction, as it absolves so many issues with feedback and getting the correct type of response.
WeTransfer portals have fallen by the wayside, I like the idea but I prefer using the platform purely just for filesharing. I would, however, like to take control of the brand features there at some point.
With the website, I made an attempt at a new sleek design, but it fell flat for mobile compatibility and the larger desktop sizes. It’s essentially a short menu opening to my services and showcasing a carousel of three of my proudest projects in the back. On my laptop it looks great, on any big desktop it looks a bit rubbish with the white-space around it.
On mobile it looks horrific, disjointed and rough. It still works however, but definitely need to dedicate sometime to reworking the website. Especially since that’s the platform I’m trying to bring leads and prospectives to.
I think it does a better job at making clear I’m editing and telling stories with video and film, but it’s not as great as I want it to be.
What Is The Goal for Next Time?
2024 has been a great learning curve, and I’m very happy with the position I have found myself in. I’m super grateful for all the connections I’ve made, the spaces I have found myself working in and the experiences, both good and bad, that have happened. I feel very much shaped by what has been going on and definitely in a happier space generally speaking, excited to move forward.
Next year I want more results and to move in the direction of growth and progress. The workspace will be integral, not only in allowing this to happen, but allowing myself to keep up should the progress be made.
As far as things are currently, I’m largely happy with the how I am. Any developments in the workspace are a case of adjusting and being prepared for growth, should that happen.
The key development would be in the digital improvements; namely, building out a workflow that incorporates the tools I have more effectively. This is especially pertinent with the client-facing job I do. As I say, tools like frame.io are underutilised currently despite being a massive help to my process in the past. If I can develop and implement a system that uses all the tools at their most effective I will be happy.
I still need to work out the best digital storage space for myself, and the new year will give a clean slate to work towards that. While I largely work for myself internal storage generally suits my needs, but digital storage will become imperative to keep clean and up-to-date in the future so I do really need to look and how I best do that.
So much of the goals are preparation, and then any other developments are based on the developments of the work itself.
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