Based on my in-depth interviews with Main PDs, I will observe how a PD comes to formulate his or her multiplicity throughout the career development process. After entering into the labour market, the multiple selves of a PD are not automatically formulated; rather, their multiplicity is constructed through the career development process itself as PDs experience dynamic socialisation processes both within and outside of their organisations. As a result, PDs typically have multiple desires based on their multiple identities. My aim here is not to generalise a concept of PD identity, but to create an analytical framework of multiplicity, which has the capacity to consider both the specificity of creative labour and the paradoxical nature of creative
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Many of them stated that they were very disappointed with their marginal roles during the initial career stages. In most cases, an AD’s life is expected to be very busy and challenging due to huge workloads and poor working conditions. However, many interviewees emphasised that their disappointment at the early career stage was not about the heavy workload but their inability to make something ‘real’. Indeed, for many respondents, their first moment of receiving feedback about their first opportunity to edit something ‘real’, which is typically a 30 second trailer for a programme, was a vivid memory. Interviewee JL (Main PD at a cable television company, 14 years) explained her experience of such a moment:
At first, I was swamped with a workload that was too heavy. But one day, they offered me a chance to make a short trailer. After editing it, their feedback was much greater than my expectation. That thrilling moment, like ecstasy…it was my main driving force. I can’t forget the moment.
Interviewee …show more content…
With the desire to receive positive feedback, PDs start to learn the shared aesthetic criteria of producing a programme within a given organisation. After identifying the ‘right’ way to edit a video clip, they begin to internalise certain organisational standards. However, from my interviews, I found that such phenomena should not be understood as the disappearance of individual idealism; rather, the tendency to conform could be identified as a temporary postponement of individual tastes and preferences in order to achieve an opportunity to do a ‘real’ thing at a later date (producing their own
Many of them stated that they were very disappointed with their marginal roles during the initial career stages. In most cases, an AD’s life is expected to be very busy and challenging due to huge workloads and poor working conditions. However, many interviewees emphasised that their disappointment at the early career stage was not about the heavy workload but their inability to make something ‘real’. Indeed, for many respondents, their first moment of receiving feedback about their first opportunity to edit something ‘real’, which is typically a 30 second trailer for a programme, was a vivid memory. Interviewee JL (Main PD at a cable television company, 14 years) explained her experience of such a moment:
At first, I was swamped with a workload that was too heavy. But one day, they offered me a chance to make a short trailer. After editing it, their feedback was much greater than my expectation. That thrilling moment, like ecstasy…it was my main driving force. I can’t forget the moment.
Interviewee …show more content…
With the desire to receive positive feedback, PDs start to learn the shared aesthetic criteria of producing a programme within a given organisation. After identifying the ‘right’ way to edit a video clip, they begin to internalise certain organisational standards. However, from my interviews, I found that such phenomena should not be understood as the disappearance of individual idealism; rather, the tendency to conform could be identified as a temporary postponement of individual tastes and preferences in order to achieve an opportunity to do a ‘real’ thing at a later date (producing their own