Submission Guidelines

SUBMISSION OF YOUR OWN WOMEN IN LIGHTING INTERVIEW.

We want this project to be an expanding archive telling the stories of Women in Lighting from around the world. Whatever part of lighting you work in – design, product, manufacturing, art, research, professional development or education – we are interested in your story.

Your upload can be video, audio, pictures & text or a written article – it’s up to you. Please don’t make it a sales pitch for you or your company and please try to make it a positive and inspirational experience for people to enjoy. The main aim of this project is to create a platform for the promotion of women working in the lighting industry so that their stories are heard and their profiles are raised. We believe in gender equality, the #balanceforbetter and the positive power of both genders working together. Although the lighting industry is generally well–balanced in gender, the profile of women is much lower – we want to change that.

The Women in Lighting project is inclusive of all people who identify as women.

We thank you for taking time to contribute to this project and look forward to getting to know you and your lighting story. 

 

THE QUESTIONS.

Below are the standard questions we have asked everyone. Some people have chosen to omit some questions as they feel they don’t apply to them or some people have adjusted them to make them more suitable to their story. Each interview is intended to be around 10 minutes long but to date they have ranged from 7 to 20 minutes. It’s up to you to judge how long your story needs to be but our experience is that people prefer a more focussed interview.

  1. Introduce yourself (name, company, position, country) and tell us how you got into lighting (including education/qualifications).
  2. Tell us about your work – is there a specific type of project you like to work on or an area you specialise in and why?
  3. What project are you most proud of and why?
  4. What is the biggest challenge that you have overcome in your career?
  5. How does light inspire you?
  6. What is your message for other Women In Lighting?

 

RESOURCES.

We have provided some resources for your interview that you can use if you want, you don’t have to, but they are available here for download and include:

  • A blank Final Cut Pro project file with the titles, graphics, sub-titles and the fades we have used for our interviews.
  • An Adobe Illustrator .ai file of the title slide for you to modify. An Enscapsulated Post Script .eps format of the same is also included.
  • A Keynote Presentation with a version of the titles, graphics, lower thirds and fades as we have used for our interviews. This has also been exported as a PowerPoint file but we’re not sure how good the export is as we don’t have PowerPoint to check!
  • The Women In Lighting background
  • The Women in Lighting logo in black, white and coral
  • The end credit slide

Download Resources

 

The official font for the project is Josefin Sans, it would be great if you can use this to help keep the site consistent. It can be downloaded here.

If you need something else that we haven’t provided, please feel free to ask. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to provide it, but if we can we will. The format is not strict, we’re happy for you to adapt what we have provided or even do your own thing – whatever works best for you and your story. The aim should be to produce a 10 minute inspirational story of your lighting journey.

 

TIPS.

If you are going to do a video interview we would offer the following advice. Please note that we are not experts in this field so some of this advice may not be the best way to do things but it has worked ok for us so far! All of our recordings are done on a camera and an iPad but an iPhone would be equally capable of producing a good result.

  • Handle each question separately, don’t try to do the whole thing in one take.
  • Make sure you are in a quiet place with an interesting or neutral background – take care not to have any distractions in the background or props sticking out of peoples heads or ears!
  • It really helps to use a tripod to ensure that the camera is steady and doesn’t move/wobble during the interview. There are lots of Smart Phone tripod mounts available on Amazon or eBay.
  • Frame the speaker in view thinking about their position. Consider the camera shot as split into thirds and place the subject in the opposite third to the direction that they are looking. For example, if the interviewee is looking to the right of the camera, place them on the left third of the frame.
  • Think about the lighting and try to get your face well lit either from natural light or electric lighting. Make sure it’s as flattering as possible and doesn’t cause shadows or reflections in glasses, etc.
  • If you are using a Smart Phone it can be useful to record in 4K as you can scale your shot to create a close-up without losing any quality which can be useful if you need to edit something out of your recording. On an iPhone go “Settings / Camera / Record Video” to enable 4K recording. All the final films should be uploaded as 1080p.
  • We have used two camera angles to give enable us to edit out hesitations or mistakes without needing to re–shoot but one camera angle will work fine.
  • In order to get good audio we would suggest that you invest in an external microphone. We have used this one successfully on both our iPad and camera.
  • In your final edit you can also cover glitches and mistakes with project images and edit out the element you don’t want in your final version.
  • If you are going to do an audio interview, then we would also suggest you use an external microphone connected to your Smart Phone to record the sound.

 

Terms & Conditions.

Please ensure that your submission complies with the following terms and conditions:

  • Each Participant must currently be a woman working with light. This can be as a designer, an artist, a manufacturer, a journalist, within a professional organisation or an educator for example. Although started within the architectural lighting industry, we welcome submissions for women working in lighting for film, theatre, entertainment, etc.
  • Your Interview may be in a language different to English but we ask that you provide subtitles or a translation.
  • Your Interview must contain original images/footage or content from others that you have permission to use. It must not infringe the copyright of any third party or laws.
  • The copyright for the Submission remains with the Participant. However, in producing the Submission, each Participant grants an unlimited worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license, free of charge to the Women In Lighting (WIL) Project allowing full reproduction rights to use the Interview in an exhibition, film or any other format or publicity relating to the WIL Project. This includes the use as a whole or in parts.
  • Each Participant must complete the required information fields and agree to be contacted later by the WIL Project for updated information.
  • Each Participant explicitly warrants and represents to be entitled to grant the rights to WIL to use images/footage/audio/content and any other information in any form whatsoever (the "Material") included in their Interview / Submission, and that such Material was a) free of errors at the time of their Submission, b) does not infringe any trademark or intellectual property of third parties, c) does not offend against good morals, d) does not harm any persons or companies (including the warranty and representation that contents or materials are not defamatory).
  • All Participants understand and agree that WIL may use any part of their Submission for marketing and promotional purposes including any medium and that there will not be any monetary compensation awarded to the Participants by WIL in exchange for such use.
  • Although WIL will try to ensure appropriate credits are given where possible, WIL shall not be obligated to mention the author of contributions or photos by name. Should authors nevertheless assert claims against WIL the Participant shall release and hold harmless WIL and its managers / representatives from and against any such claims.
  • The Participant shall indemnify WIL and the project managers / representatives against all claims from third parties arising due to alleged or actual infringements.
  • WIL and its project managers / representatives are not responsible for any damages resulting from images submitted by Participants which are in violation to these rules.
  • For video & audio interviews, submit your interview by uploading it to a video/audio streaming provider, such as Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Facebook and so on, which allows embeds in our website. Please whitelist https://womeninlighting.com if you are restricting access.
  • Text interviews should be submitted as Word, Pages, .txt or PDFs. Please upload to a file hosting provider such as Dropbox, Google Drive or your own server. You will be asked to provide the links in the submission form.
  • Submissions will not be approved before upload but periodically reviewed. We reserve the right to take down any videos if they are deemed to be inappropriate. An inappropriate video is one that does not adhere to the aims and standards of the project. i.e. there should be no product sales, no offensive comments about anyone else or general negativity. We want you to share your path in the lighting industry with the aim of inspiring other people.
  • Submission will be taken to mean acceptance of these terms and conditions.

 

Submit Your Interview

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