PANEL REVIEW!!!!

my panel Members included Jeffery Allison, Gordon Stettinius, Jon Henley and Frncis Thompson. Things got off to a bit of a wet start however this worked out as Gordon Stettinius and I both stumbled through our first meetings. He expressed that he had never been on that side of the table before and we worked our way though my portfolio. He like myself is a closet/beginner graphic design geek and we spent a fair amount of the time getting through the technical parts of my previous semester's work. His critique was far more technically focused than the rest of the meetings I would have for the day. It was helpful to have someone go over my images with a sharp eye and help give me ideas for tightening the post work even further. Other than that we spoke quite a bit about what i would be doing next and about the possible complications to health that can sometimes be a part of shooting documentary/ editorial work.

My next meeting was with Jon Henley who I had met previously through the professional practices class I took from last semester. Being that he also recognized me it seemed tat he was pleased to finally see some of my work. For the first seven minutes or so of the meeting we discussed the work I was presenting, spending a great amount of that time on the various ways the series could be interpreted. We spoke about the way work is valued and looked at by our society and some of the other connotations of class. He was pleased to hear about the process of shooting and how the choices were made in wardrobe and model selection. The rest of the time was spent on discussing how the industry was changing and what kinds of technical knowledge I should be getting up on to stay competitive.

The time I spent in my 3rd meeting with Francis Thompson the Capital One Art Buyer was the most stressful and nerve wracking of the meetings not because he had negative things to say about the work but because he had such an amazing poker face. He wanted to as much as I could say about the work in front of him without offering too many of his own questions. I tried to fill the time as best as I could but felt pretty insecure talking to a guy who's face wasn't telling me anything about what he was hearing. When he did respond it was generally in a clarifying manner or with a very specific question about the concept or execution.

The final meeting of my day was also the most successful, by having my meetings back to back with only a few minutes to pause in between I was able to catch a flow of ideas and adapt quickly to the challenges of each meeting all the while revising my presentation and making my comments more concise. The last meeting was with Jeffery Allison from the VMFA. He laughed at the work and was visibly enthusiastic about what he was seeing. He seemed to get every little reference i had thrown into the series from the title of the series right down to little details others had been uninterested in or had missed entirely.

I truly enjoyed the experience and feel that the comments made by my panel members were all good to positive. While some of them pointed out technical errors all were considered to be small and simply a matter of tightening up the post production. The concept was well received by all and none of them found it to be uninteresting or some about which they had nothing to respond with. All of my meetings were engaging and even the most difficult of them ran full with discussion up to or past the allotted time.