Professionalism at Mill Meadow

Professionalism at Mill Meadow

Working professionally at Mill Meadow was second nature for me. In the past, during work experience or even at college, I have tried to maintain manners. I also tend to treat college as if it were a job to maintain my manners and work ethic.

Maintaining manners has prepared me for almost any instance that would require my professional attention. For me, it is all about getting to know the client and what they want from me. I do not tend to sit around. Politeness and manners get you a long way, and I remember when I was at Icon, I managed to strike up a conversation with Laura (the CEO), we bumped into each other accidentally, when I was on my phone, which contradicts what I have said before now. However, I was enjoying a coffee break, so it was not without reason, I introduced myself, and she began to ask me questions, I managed to talk confidently, and we began to talk about how Icon began and developed into what it is now. We had a good conversation, even though it ended abruptly when Laura was called into a meeting.

While at Mill Meadow, professionalism started right at the beginning with our first meeting, where we all shook hands and introduced our roles to Chris, so he would know who to speak to for dates, who for animation and who for the actual filming of Mill Meadow. After this, we had a polite talk about what sort of clients Mill Meadow attract and how respectful some of them might have been in the past. Overall, in the meeting, I believe we were all spot on, in terms of eye contact manners and no one spoke incorrectly. Afterwards, we all shook hands and moving forward, we would be contacting Chris via email, through Anna.

A few weeks after the meeting, we had finished writing up our group proposal and sent it to the Mill Meadow email. We had no response from Mill Meadow, so we emailed again, by that time I had simply had enough and asked Anna what was up. I asked what email Anna had been sending the proposal too, which was the information email. We then found Chris’s email, sent the proposal there and then we received an instant response from Chris! All the emails we sent were politely structured with many thanks and Morning or Dear Chris at the beginning of every email; we were all very meticulous with our wording.

In our emails back and forth from Chris, we developed our proposal idea with him, planned the filming date (though more on that later). Later we also discussed the usage of my drone and finally told him roughly what we could create for Mill Meadow, within our schedule for the project.

With the planning for our film as well as communicating via email, things were not moving fast enough, for me at least, on Monday the 11th of November we had a group discussion, then we decided that I would call Chris on my mobile to get things moving again, I spoke with Chris, very professionally then proceeded to express my concerns that we needed to begin filming ASAP, I explained to Chris that we could travel to Mill Meadow the following day (the 12th) and we both agreed this could work. We then, as a group sent another email to Chris later that Monday, confirming what time we were planning to arrive and begin our shoot.

On the morning of the shoot, I sent a message to our teams' group chat, letting them know all was good from my end. There were also no problems from anyone else, except the number 7 bus that, Jack, Anna and Jed get to college was 10 minutes late. Nevertheless, we got to Mill Meadow on time and were kindly greeted by Chris, we then all shook his hand and said, “Good morning”, Chris then took us around the site. The next communication we had with Chris was when we were discussing the proposal. It felt as if Chris had somewhere more important to be than seeing to us, so the conversation was cut short by me. I stated that we would go for a cinematic film showing off the location and nearby facilities such as the local pub as well as what guests can expect inside the lodges. Although I did not express that this would be a lot of work for us students, I felt as if we could accomplish the challenge. After Chris left, and we cracked on with the filming. The next face to face contacts we had was when we had an improvised meeting with a local writer. She asked us if we could make an animation of their character and input it into the Mill Meadow film. This task would be possible, as Dan, who is the animator in our group, was absolutely up for the challenge. We then discussed the story of the characters further, even though our team had little interest, we did stay and listen to what she had to say. While she was talking, we took notes, which I believe was the polite and correct thing to do, we then all shook hands. That was all the communication for our first filming day.

For the lead up until the second filming day, we made sure to keep in contact with Chris sending him some of our BTS photos, while also mentioning that we would need to come back down on another day to film again, which we planned for the following Monday. During this week we sent Chris a few emails about the animation we would incorporate into our film, at the beginning.

For the second filming day communication as a group was good. Jack did drop out very late after saying he could come filming with us, but it was no deal-breaker, as we still managed to film. Communication with Chris that day was a fairly standard procedure; he gave us a lodge where we could make a cup of tea and use the other facilities. We did have one problem. When we were filming the hot tubs, we couldn’t get a light to turn on. I called Chris, and I apologised straight away for bothering him, but we got the information we needed. I was very thankful to Chris for helping us, and I expressed that over the phone.

Now all that is left is our third filming day which would be on a Sunday, in the next few weeks. We have yet to send an email to Chris, but when we do it will be just as professional as the before.

Overall things so far have been great, in terms of communication, no wrong dates mixed up and we are well on schedule, things are going well, and we need to keep it up!