Andy Carr

I am a conscientious, positive person who strives to be active in every aspect of my life. Recreationally I enjoy reading, writing, film, drawing, painting, music, walking and cycling, all of which fill my time outside of work and reflect my drive to remain self-disciplined and productive. I spent the early part of my career developing essential life skills and discovering professional areas of interest that I excelled in while allowing me to support and spend time with my daughter as she grew up. Since then I have returned to education to study a degree in Film, a subject I have always been extremely passionate about. I believe my time at university has improved my confidence to progress within the workplace on the back of my continued capacity as an organiser, content producer and creator. As a result, I feel I have refined my focus going forward and am excited to continue developing all of my creative and practical pursuits along similar lines.

I am a massive lover of physical media and own and continue to collect a large and cherished amount of DVDs, Blu-ray and VHS. I also frequently enjoy reading and watching discussions, essays and documentaries regarding the history of cinema, particularly within more obscure genres. The curation, preservation and restoration of forgotten or disregarded but often important examples of filmmaking is something I am extremely interested in and this crosses over into the subject matter and nature of my own content creation. I possess a great reverence for local filmmakers such as Dean Puckett and Ashley Thorpe and particularly enjoy discovering films rooted and shot in Devon or Cornwall where I believe the landscape and our particular relationship with this area of the country generates a very unique and sometimes underappreciated atmosphere that I deeply love.

I have previously worked in office, warehouse, reception and retail environments and have gained good customer/client-facing skills through all. I enjoy involving myself in as many areas of responsibility as possible and possess administrative and stock-control experience with knowledge of MS Office, Apple suites and company-specific software of various types. I am careful and methodical and strive to be precise while remaining conscious of the time restraints of a busy working day.

I worked in the security industry for twelve years, beginning as a reception officer and moving into alarm response then operations where I provided support and cover for the Operations Manager. During this time I learned to identify with clients’ needs and ensure I follow up on any issues needing resolution and see them out to a positive conclusion. My attention to detail helped me to create and maintain ongoing local and national contracts through liaising with National Accounts departments and Business Development Managers to ensure the smooth transition and accurate collation of account information. My personability and love for writing let me engage in regular correspondence with both internal and external customers via telephone, email, letter and face-to-face customer visits resulting in good and lasting professional relationships. My ability to organise and facilitate allowed me to effectively provide important information and instructions to colleagues and help manage a fleet of vans which involved completing new vehicle handovers, reporting damage and breakdowns, booking in vehicles for servicing or repair, monitoring their progress and ensuring replacement hire vehicles were arranged to cover affected shifts. 

During my time at Peter Betteridge Furnishers I moved from my role as Sales Consultant to Delivery Scheduler then Administrator based on my natural proficiency for time management, accuracy and forward-thinking. Here I further improved my organisational skills via the ordering of goods and equipment, planning delivery run routes, stock management, invoicing, archiving, auditing and data entry. I remained client-focused at all times, providing ongoing sales advice and customer service while frequently corresponding with suppliers and their representatives. This offered me a sense of pride in taking ownership of my work and seeing the successful results of my efforts reflected in the relationships I helped to build along with the smooth running of the business.

My time at the Plymouth College of Art required me to demonstrate accuracy and attention to detail, excelling in group collaborations whereby the quality of my input would contribute to the successes or failures within a finished piece and to the feeling of accomplishment for all of its contributors. The multiple-disciplined nature of these collaborations meant that I developed a good handle on production management in particular which required me to be able to organise and manage tasks within a group to support co-workers as well as utilise my own time and space effectively. 

My personal filmmaking has allowed me to maintain my practice since University and to hone my writing, camera operation and lighting skills as well as my navigation of latest versions of Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop, the ultra-low budget nature of my work also necessitating the need to experiment with other known editing software such as Final Cut and Videopad. My struggles to produce industry-standard quality has nevertheless necessitated an urge to experiment and innovate as much as I can to overcome shortcomings and to be constructive in my approach. My current work on the film Late Runner has pushed me to improve my knowledge of and ability to regularly operate and maintain video and sound equipment and to control and design lighting more effectively to gain the best results from every situation. I have also become adept at overseeing the transference and safe storage of digital media files to enable easy identification and categorisation in regards of editing and for general access, social media and promotional usage. I believe my understanding of professional expectations and the innovation sometimes required to meet them is in line with an ethos where technical learning and creativity come hand in hand.