Effect of Virus and Globalization on Post-Production Industry

Almost six years ago, I left twenty years of career and left office life for the passion I had since high school. For good, I planned it a lot and would blame myself for not trying. I had thought of what I would do in detail and had planned out everything. 

There is a famous quote by Carl von Clausewitz;

Every plan is a good one - until the first shot is fired.

My situation was no different. I expected that I'd find a place in the visual market in my country, how naive I have been. If the world has been as it was ten years ago, I would have returned to professional life many years ago, but the world is smaller and accessible. 

Due to the Corona outbreak nowadays, I'm compiling my old work, updating the website, and trying to learn new skills. Like many people, I watch different programs about this virus on Youtube. One historian told that at the beginning of the 19th century, there had been a cholera outbreak in India; it took a year to spread whole India and took two years to move to Thailand and took another three years to reach Europe and Africa. Epidemic ended in 1824. The reason it took so long was that there was no way for people to travel that fast, and sick people died on the road if they were ill. Today people could go less than a day from one location to any location in the world. 

When I saw that I wasn't able to crack the outer shell of the advertisement industry in my country, I decided to give it a try to the rest of the world; I had successes and failures. The core of this business is fighting with rejections and start all over the next day. 

I saw what globalization is when I took a project from Isey Skyr, a yogurt company based in Iceland. The photographer was in Germany and the advertising agency in Denmark. Photographer sent me the files, and I received the revisions from him, second revisions came from the ad agency, I sent the final files to Denmark that graphic designs added on my retouches. Finally, the prints went on the billboard in Iceland. 

I still take a few projects in Turkey, but now %90 of my work is international. I see my work on the home page of a finance company in New Zealand, ads in Paris, or on billboards in Manhattan and Hong Kong. For the last three years, I have been having my meetings via Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, or UberConferences. I have been going in and out of Slack groups of various agencies and production companies. A room in my flat is my office for the last six years. It took a bit of time for my mother to understand that I can make work from some distant corner of the world, and she now asks if there is an exciting project from somewhere in the world. 

I think after this pandemic, more companies will realize that as long as the work id good, outsourcing their work outside of their city or country Is a viable option, and limiting themselves with what they have around them is also limiting their competitiveness. Of course, more freelancers and remote workers will gather; therefore, the competition will increase at our end too. Nothing will be the same, and things will change once again.

Thanks to all people who gave a chance to me and helped me to realize my dreams and vision. It will come with its opportunities and threats. I hope the human being realizes that they can't keep on consuming like yesterday.