Monthly Archives: September 2012

Are you an Effective Makeup FX Artist?

The new furniture was delivered in August for The Makeup FX Workshop. A swish new boardroom table and chairs, a couple of glass display cabinets, and five big bookcases for the offices.

Picking up piles of books and magazines from the floor that has been their repository for the last few weeks, and re-homing them in nice neat clusters on otherwise empty shelves is a very happy-making activity, and it got me thinking.

Organisation is an essential part of doing a good job, in any field, yes? A crucial… well, do you call it a virtue, a trait, or a skill?

However you arrange the words, organisation is crucial to being able to sustain a career in Makeup FX.

Whether it’s organising your kit so you can find things exactly when you need them, organising your time effectively in preproduction, organising the workspace, organising your workflow to sculpt, mould and make your appliances, and then, finally, being organised onset so you get your actors ready on time, if you don’t have the ability to systemise, arrange, and control your actions, you wont last long in this business!

But what is organisation, exactly, and how does it translate into action?
I have met many people throughout my life who devoted what seemed like most of their lives to being ‘organised’, with colour-coded everything and cross-referenced lists and categories that would put the Dewey Decimal System to shame. Entire retail chains exist dedicated to selling prettily coloured stationary and filing systems, and the self-help section in any larger bookstore will have an entire shelf devoted to systems of organisation that purport to change your life in ten chapters or less! However, being able to arrange your possessions according to category and need, pack a suitcase without creasing anything, or make and freeze a weeks worth of meals in one go, while undoubtedly EFFICIENT, doesn’t necessarily translate into being an EFFECTIVE use of your time and resources.

In short: It doesn’t matter how good you are at completing a task, if the task itself isn’t one that is helping you achieve your goals!

What’s the difference between Efficient actions and Effective ones?

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