Howard Gardner, 2007, ‘Minds Viewed Globally: A Personal Introduction’ in Five Minds For the Future, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, ch.1.

In Howard Gardner’s chapter ‘Five minds for the future’ he illuminates the five kinds of really necessary minds for people who want successfully work in society. Those five minds are the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesising Mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind.

For the people who have disciplined Mind, is able to master the skills steadily, and solve the problem empirically. If the people do not have at least one, they are easily turned to be followers; they might be restricted in some tasks. The Synthesising Mind requires people be capable for grouping, analyzing and evaluating information from different sources. I think this mind is really useful, it enables us effectively and accurately to complete tasks in future. For the people who want to work in media, film or other artistic industry, undoubtedly, the creating Mind is inevitable and significant for them to have. Always thinking in a fresh way, putting new idea, being innovative.

And the last two, actually, I think respectful and Ethical Mind seem like really basic things for every people, no matter what the job we are doing, what ages we are. However, it is disappointed because there are few people, they might excel in one mind of the first three, but they do not have the last two minds. As result, although they are successful in their career, but they will never respected by others. So I deeply hope I can firstly have the respectful mind and the ethical mind, depending on theses two, keep working hard and endeavor to develop other minds.

Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, ch.7.

 “Finding time in a digital age”-a quit interesting topic. Depending on this topic, Judy Wajcman tries to introduce the idea about how to efficiently mange our work time, and how to be flexible. Firstly, Judy shows the idea of one economist John Maynard Keynes. John believed that people don’t have work too many hours to satisfy their needs, people is able to enjoy their leisure time. He also imagined the technology developments eventually would enable the productivity be higher, as a result, people can efficiently work with the digital machine. However, the high technology flailed to liberate us. The new technology acceleration forces us to be more rushed. Undoubtedly, we live in an even faster pace of life. We have to work with abundant resource. Learning the different types of technologies also ask us to pay more attention and more time.

There is no doubt that digital development benefits to society, also we both know the technology will keep developing in future. So it is important to know how to properly leverage the digital things to improve efficiency. Personally, I think a clear, reasonable and regular plan might be helpful.

In chapter four, Cal Newport discusses both the craftsman mindset and the passion mindset of working people. Simply to say craftsman mindset focus on what you can offer the world, and passion mindset focus on what the world can offer you. Depending on the experiences the author mentioned of Jordan and Martin, we may in further know the craftsman mindset. Jordan believes it is valuable if people can create some meaningful thing and present it to this world. Because, the work doesn’t lie, what work you did will directly show your ability. This is the people who have a craftsman mindset, they are willing to practice, attribute, also they are enjoying in the process.

However, the most of people, including myself, we are usually asking what we could get from the job? Do I like it? Is it suitable for me? Actually, it is so hard to get a right answer. So I feel confused in some time. I think I have to change my mindset. It is true if we put too much attention on return, we might be haperaware of what the things we don’t like in our job. There is no any job can be 100% perfect, especially for the fresh people like us, we may do a lots of entry-level works after we graduated. We have to consider what we can do for those jobs even it is entry-level.

Craftsman mindset enables people ignored the self-centered concerns, and instead keep finding a way to make them be better. As Martin said don’t always want to know what is the concrete way to be successful, we just have to be so good others can not ignore. No one owes we a good career, we have to earn it.

Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.

Week 3 reading log

Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.

In The Informal Media Economy Lobato and Thomas point out the debates of labour in culture, creative and media industries. In modern society, the freelance workers become more and more in media and creative industries. Lobato and Thomas enable us to think will the freelance writing sites devalue the writing profeesion? Will it Provide a platforms for amateurs? What ethics should be considered and what problems will have in using non-professional labour? Those questions both can be considered in different perspectives. For example, depending on some professional or academic creative media workers perspective, they probably question about the professsion of them. For the freelancer, as amateurs, they got a chance to develop their hobby, they have flexible hours and freedom creativity.

However, the authors describe the main concerns of informal media industry, which is unpredictability, insecure and low pay for workers. Honestly, this is the cruel fact for all the media students who want to contribute to media industry in future. Actually the most of Chinese parents prefer their child to work in government, hospital and law office, rather than film, TV, Radio or other media industries. They assert there is the lack of stability of those jobs. But for the people who is really interested in those realms, like me, even we know the potential predictability, insecure of the job, we still want to try it. There is no any job is so easy to do in the beginning. And the passion we have for the job enables us have a spirit to conquer the problems. It is so lucky if we can do a thing we loved.

 

Summary of the Chinese Film Industry’s Policy Environment 2007, Penske Business Media, New York, N. Y.

 This article talks about the policy of Chinese film industry, which provided by government. Reform and opening up have brought about great changes for China’s film industry. In order to deepen film industry and establish new mode of it, the government and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has released a series of policies.

The first major one is joint production policy. The Chinese government believes the diversity of world culture will benefit to Chinese film industry. So they are willing to cooperate with filmmakers from all countries. There are three ways of joint production policy, which are co-production, assisted production and entrusted production.

The second policy is film import policy. The basic principles of this policy are high quality, high intellectual and artistic merit, and excellent technologies. Depending on those principles, the Chinese government importing more than 20 foreign films per year. It is important component of cultural exchange. The third one is theater investment policy. Foreign capital is able to build, renovate, and operate movie theaters, with a maximum share of 49%. The last one is film distribution policy. The entry barrier has been lowered by government, because of the developing needs of promoting the domestic films market, and encouraging private enterprises to contribute the distribution and sales.

Wu, X. 1992, The Chinese film industry since 1977, University of Oregon.

 The author mainly comprehensively analyses the Chinese film industry connecting with Chinese policy and economy. In chapter1 the author clearly sates the Chinese film history. After the Lumiere Brothers formally exhibited movies in Paris, on 11 August 1896, Shanghai, saw its first films. In that time, the Chinese people saw the most of films in foreigner’s various rented fairgrounds and teahouse.

The first commercial movie theater Permanent Movie Theater was built in 1908 by a Spaniard. This theater was the symbol of the emerging Chinese film industry. However, actually the film industry of China almost controlled by foreigners, some Chinese people failed in attempting to participate in it. The first Chinese film, Diniunshan. was shot by Fengta Photography Shop with a French camera and German raw film in 1905 in Beijing. The first co-production mod of Chinese film happened in 1912, when In 1912, two Americans, Essler and Lehrmann, bought the Asia Film Company, they invited two Chinese, Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu to make films together. However, this cooperation was interrupted by World War I. Generally, due to the lack of extensive investment and complex technology during 1896 to 1914, the development of Chinese film industry was so slow.

 

Reference

China Focus: Chinese film industry slumps after opening up to Hollywood 2012, woodside.

Development issues as Chinese film industry booms: official 2015, Woodside.

Summary of the Chinese Film Industry’s Policy Environment 2007, Penske Business Media, New York, N. Y.

Wu, X. 1992, The Chinese film industry since 1977, University of Oregon.