Chapter Fourteen: The End of an Era
So I feel like I'm getting pretty close to getting caught up on my life. Next post should be in real time. Woo!!
Okay, so when I left off, my phone had rang. I was doing my unpaid internship, and loving it. I had been looking for paying jobs, but was quite content to stay were as was, knowing that it was a matter of time before I could actually get paid. It was early March of last year.
On the other end of my phone was a guy I had gone to school with. I had seen him at a holiday party and learned that he was editing VH1 news. At that time, the word "News" had caught my attention more than anything else. Granted, I had never seen these news segments, but I pictured the MTV Kurt Loder version and had gotten pretty excited. He assured me it wasn't
that cool, but I insisted he take my information in case there was ever an opening. And yes, it was him.
There was an opening at the post house he worked at and the boss was interested in me. I was freaking estatic. I think I called everyone I knew and gabbed and gabbed about finally getting my "big break".
After throughly jinxing the whole thing, I met with the bossman. He was a nice guy, very straightforward, and funny. He took me out to lunch were we had a beer, and me in my nervousness, had not been able to eat all morning. Out of politeness, I ordered what he was having, a dark beer. I sipped a little too fast while we were waiting for our food, and got good and tipsy for my interview. Not a great idea, I know. Well, at least I was no longer nervous.
I tried so hard to contain myself and not fall off of the barstool. I told him that I was interested in editing and most of my experience was with Final Cut Pro, but I had worked on Avid before in the past. He then explained to me his business plan. He basically owns his own post production house. He hires young editing hopefuls and trains them to be editors. He pays a lot less than an editor should make, but the experience that you get, really pays for itself.
He had been burned by a lot of former employees, taking what they had learned and fleeing. Leaving him to train new people all over again. So he said that unfortunately, he is going to take his time with this new hire. He said he liked me, and I'd be hearing from him. Hopeful, and still a little tipsy, I tried to walk in a straight line out of the resturant and back to the subway.
It was a couple of weeks before I heard anything. But one day he called and asked if I could come in again. I told him I could and jetted over. He offered me the job, paying a lousy $500 a week, but I accepted. Five hundred may seem like nothing, and it wasn't enough to pay my rent, but I had been working at an unpaid internship mind you. I felt like I had just won the lottery.
He explained that I would be his assistant on a VH1 music video show. Again with the phone calls! I mean this was huge for me. I was a year out of school, had struggled with rather or not I even wanted to edit, and then six months later I was landing a job as an assistant editor on a nationally broadcast tv show, cut on Avid, and I was literally there to learn. Not to mention, the small but welcomes pay that went with it.
I had to tell my bosses at my internship that I would be leaving. That was hard, but they understood. They offered to pay me what he was paying me, which was probably the best feeling in the world. Here I was with two jobs that I wanted, and I got to chose between the two. Everyone wondered why I didn't pit the two of them against each other to get paid more, but the bottom line was, this was a great opportunity for someone like me. I still couldn't believe I had gotten the job and didn't want to do anything to risk losing it.
I explained to my bosses that while I loved working for them, I couldn't pass an opportunity like this up. It had much more potential for being something I could grow into, and it was a nationally broadcast television show, which is inarguably great for any resume. They understood, as I knew they would, and told me that I would always have a job with them. I returned that I would always be around if they needed anything, and that I was a phone call away.
We parted on excellent terms and I began to finally feel like the whole twisted journey I had taken since graduation was what was supposed to happen to me.
i was supposed to take the horrible desk job at Court TV, and was meant to be unemployed for a while. Therefore when this internship had come along, I swooped it up. Because again, it was
supposed to happen. I was meant to fall out of love with editing, and I was meant to return to it. I felt justified in my months of misery, knowing that even though I had some hefty credit card bills to show for it, it was my path to this place.
That sounds so cheesy, I know. But I really feel like it was all baby steps for me, and that I probably wouldn't have ever gotten back on track without the months of self-doubt and time of serious self-reflection.
So I started the new job, acting as an assistant, and as a sponge. Every keystroke he made, my eyes followed. For the first few weeks, I was lost. I spent my days hooking up decks in some of the other rooms, and sitting behind my boss watching his every move. Before I knew it, he had me cutting little parts of the show, like the coming ups, or cutting in music. I learned right away most of the commands on the keyboard, but was still pretty slow. Luckily, my boss had ADD, so he would just get up and leave the room often, leaving me sitting there doing nothing for long periods of time. I was so bored, I would get in the chair and just start doing stuff. This is a move I wouldn't recommend normally, but he had sort of left the door open for that sort of behavior.
I had gotten a lot quicker, and by May, felt confident on the machine. It was a few weeks later that I recieved a phone call one Saturday morning. It was my boss, who was distraught and told me his step-father had just died. It was a horrible tragedy and he wanted me to know that he wouldn't be in the next week. He told me I would do the things I was comfortable with on the show, and he'd bring in a freelance editor to finish the rest. I took a deep breath and told him that I could do the show all by myself. I knew it was pushing my speed, this being a two-hour show that airs on Saturday and is shot on Thursday, but I knew I needed to prove myself. I also reasoned, it would save him money. He was hesitant, and said he'd get back to me. I knew I could do it. Even if it meant spending late nights completing everything. I could place all the videos earlier in the week, and do all the coming-ups and intros before they shot. If I could just prep the show as much as possible by Thursday, I'd be able to pull it off.
He called me back later and said that I could do it. If I felt like I needed help, to call him and he'd call someone in to help me. I knew that this was my moment. This was where I was either going to make or break this position. So on Monday, I got to it. There wasn't a whole lot to do, but I did what I could. By Thursday, I had everything in as good of a place as possible, and when I got the shoot tapes, adrenaline started pumping. I was like a machine, doing everything as good as I could, making it perfect, and watching it two or three times to ensure I had done things correctly. I left the office on Thursday night at 11 o'clock. Not bad for my first show.
The screening the next morning went off without a hitch and because everyone knew the situation, was congratulating me and shaking my hand, saying "Good work!", "Looks great!", and "Way to go!". I was estatic. I got a call from my boss later that day thanking me, and I knew that I had pulled it off. Much to my surprise, he offered me the show. He offered for me to be the
editor on this nationally broadcast television show. A mere three months after I started. The position came with a small raise, still not great, but obviously, I took it. And I started editing a television show.
I knew I loved the format of tv even back when I was assisting. A new show every week, an air date to have the show finished by, and a lot of fly-by-the-seat of your pants days. It was exciting and stressful and I was having a blast. I got really fast in the months that followed and gained the respect of all of my producers. My boss would get on another machine from time to time and help me out so I wasn't even doing late nights anymore. I loved it. When my friend from school who had gotten me the job quit, I even helped out with news, cutting a few segments every now and then. I was the busiest one in the office. Everyone came to me for help, and I was training assistants and working as tech support for the entire post house. I had been there when the Avid Unity was installed, and had become the administrator for that as well. My resume was actually starting to look like a professional resume!
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I had a job that I loved, and was surrounded by my friends, but New York had started to wear on me. It was depressing and exhausting and I hated it more and more each day. I wanted to suck it up and just deal with it, but I couldn't ignore the fact that I knew I had something great to leave New York with. A great experience, a pretty decent resume, and confidence that had grown exponentially in the past few months. It was December when I decided I needed to move to Los Angeles. I knew it was far away, and I knew it wouldn't be easy, but the pros outweighed the cons. I had lots of good friends working out here, telling me they could get me a job in no time. I knew I wanted to continue TV, and LA is the place to be for that. I thought I would probably like the city more, being as I would have a car again and therefore, regain some freedom I had lost in NY.
It wasn't an easy desicion, and certainly not a cheap one, but I got the support of my parents and made it official. The universe seemed to align perfectly for me after that. My lease was up at the end of Feburary, and I had a good friend already living in LA seeking a roommate for March onward. I locked in with her, and put in my months notice. (I felt like I needed to give bossman, whom had given me such a great opportunity, a sizable notice so he could start looking for a replacement.) He offered me a raise to "change my lifestyle", but I declined. It wasn't the pay. It had never been the pay, I explained to him. It was the city of suffocation. It was the lack of opportunity in television. I told him I was more interested in narrative or scripted tv. He bid me good luck and sadly, at the end of Feburary, I said good-bye to New York.
Labels: editing, interview, LA, moving, NY, parents, success, TV
Chapter Twelve: Welcome To The World of Business Casual
The whole move is a blur now. We had signed a lease when we had come to NY earlier in the month.
On that trip we had stayed in what can only be described as the most glorified dorm room ever. I'll explain. Three guys that we had gone to school with had found a humble abode in Brooklyn. Their apartment was originally a gigantic, concrete room. LIke an oversized garage. No kitchen. No bathroom. No rooms. They had taken some sort of wood and built dividers for rooms, even giving the space a second story. The walls were filled, but not cluttered, with books, records, and humorous posters. Their living area consisted of about 7 chairs with ashtrays built in the arms, an entertainment center, and a blow-up doll, (if I'm not mistaken.) The room that they used as a kitchen, (although they had no running water to the apartment, or as much as a stove), had a giant pipe running through it, large enough that a person could not wrap their arms around it completely. This ran from one wall to the other about chest high. The bathroom/kicthen area, (notice the slash here), was down the hall for the entire hall the share. The kitchen was in the bathroom. The bathroom was in the kitchen. The shower was in the kitchen. The kitchen sink was were you would brush your teeth. And the whole thing was just gross and a bit unsettling. I had stayed worse places in the city, (a night spent on the floor of a studio apartment, huddled next to a radiator for heat, trying not to notice the roaches, and using the contents of our suitcases for warmth, comes to mind), but this experience sticks out for me, because it was here, walking down the dirty hallways, taking showers in flip-flops, and hearing stories about the neighbor who got held up by an eight-year-old, that it sunk in. I was moving to New York. I was going to be living this life that had been written about in thousands of books. Thousands of movies made about this place. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. This time we weren't here dreaming about the one day we'll live here. No. We were going to sign a lease. We were going to promise ourselves, and the better part of our income, to this city for at least the next year.
It was official. We were moving. Like I said, it was all a blur and happened entirely too fast. One day I was watching my uncle drive my car away, tears dripping down my face, the next, I was emptying out all of my possesions into boxes and trash bags, and sweeping things that were once swept under the couch into a gigantic pile. Our house was pretty messy, to say the least. I won't go into details here but wow, I'm sure our landlord was glad to see us go.
We were driving up, three girls, two dogs, a mother, sister, uncle, and Uhaul. All of our worldly possessions, three best friends, and 400 miles. There, we would start new lives. Start looking for jobs, good restaurants, hip bars.
Our apartment was biggest than the average NY apartment. We were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn beside a huge park, (perfect for the doggies). We painted the walls, organized all of our stuff, started to call it home.
A lot of the summer we all sat around in denial. We were on summer break right? School would be starting back up in the Fall. This was just a vacation. Less job searching went on that should have.
It happened one day, inevitably, money ran low and our parents started to get pissed. We needed jobs.
Craigslist, Mandy.com, Time Warner Careers, Monster. I was looking for a job in tv. I was looking for a job in news. My first interview was at Fox News. That first call for an interview is one of the most exciting things in the world. Finding a job is hard. Finding a job in NYC is damn near impossible. We were all looking and slowly, we all became pretty discouraged. When I got the call, there was something that reignited my confidence. I wasn't totally worthless and maybe someone would want to hire me! Woo!
My shoes were uncomfortable and it was raining. I wore flip flops and then outside of the office, changed into more suitable shoes. There was no covered area to change my shoes so I stood balanced on one foot, holding my umbrella under my chin, trying to change my shoes. It was pitiful. People were walking by, in their perfect suits, with their perfect umbrella that didn't turn inside-out at every chance, with their high-paying jobs, balancing fine in their heels like Carrie Bradshaw. I was a mess. I was so nervous when I went in, I blew it. I stumbled over words and was so intimidated I couldn't stop shaking. I buried my personality under a shameful pile of nerves. I didn't exactly know the names of any positions and winced as they told me it was "chy-ron" not "cry-on". In my head, I just had to get on the inside somehow. Then I would know the terms. There's a union for chyron operators? Really? This was turning into a mess. It was clear I didn't know much, but I tried to play it off. Unsuccessfully. I was trying to explain why I would be perfect for the job even though I wasn't a journalism major. I had the drive to succeed. That was better than any degree. Right?
I wouldn't have hired myself.
More interviews, more rejection. I kept losing jobs to people who actually went to school for news or journalism. I was discouraged and started expanding my searches to anything in television. I found an ad for a job at a national television station. I got the interview.
What was the traffic department anyway? I didn't care. All I knew was that this was a station that was on televison, had little news segments, and hell, wasn't anything to do with movies or editing. It was exactly what I was looking for. I got a new outfit, business casual attire, new shoes, and went in with confidence. At this point I had nothing to lose. For all I knew, I would be wearing an orange vest directing traffic affliated with this station. (Thinking that surely most of this traffic would be somehow involved in the news-getting-processes. Damn. I really needed to learn the terms.)
I walk in, and am amazed at just how many times this station's name appeared throughout the building. Walls, doors, television screens, tee shirts, pens. It was everywhere. The second thing the woman who was interviewing me said was, "I like your shoes." After an appropriate silence and period in which I internally congratulated myself, she added. "My mom has those same ones." Oh I recongnize snark when I see it. I smiled and forced a laugh. Somehow, someway, I got the job. Even after admitting I had no idea what a traffic department did. Only later did the reason I got hired become clear. I had a pulse. This is not a job people seek.
Let me explain what a traffic department does.
This job is a monotonous one. You sit in your business casual attire in a cubicle, next to a water cooler, staring at a computer screen all day. The traffic department is in charge of making sure the highest costing commercial spots go to air. For a two-minute break, there are usually roughly 100 spots that can go in. All ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. It's like a puzzle, doing the math figuring out which spots will bring this company the most money. Eight :15 spots at $2000 dollars a piece, or two :15 second spots at $2000, one :30 spot at $5000, and one 1:00 spot for $8000. Or the 2:00 spot for $10,000. It all gets very complicated and putting the wrong spots in can cost the company thousands. It seems easy enough, but there are spots that have to air, and then there is also a rule about which spots go next to each other. A diaper commercial must air thirty minutes away from a competing diaper commercial. Are you asleep yet?
There was a joke that I had heard on multiple occasions about the lack of sanity in the traffic department. People that did this long enough were depressed, bitter, and often hated their lives. There's not really a punchline. I did this for three months. I walked the line of casual and business casual a little too closely. I nearly costed the company lots of money on multiple occasions and only once got to even walk onto the floor in which they did the news.
Discouraged and slightly bruised I went to my boss. She was eating a lean cusine with her perfectly manicured nails and playing on her Blackberry. She looked up as I nervously tapped on her door. Shakey, I walked into her office as she nodded her head. After having what I can only describe as a panic attack, I told her I was quitting. I tried to explain that this job, environment, life, just wasn't for me. I told her, in what I assumed was a lie, that I was going to go back to editing. (I was nervous about telling her my plans to go into news, knowing her ability to crush ones dreams in the drop of a hat. "Did you go to school for that?") I also told her I had a project lined up. Also a lie. I couldn't bear to tell her that I was quitting with nothing lined up, just because I hated the job so much. That it had drained me so much. I was so creatively stunted. When I would get off work, I'd want to paint or write or do something that was creative. I was going crazy in those four fabric walls listening to Oprah everyday at four o'clock from about fifty different television screens, resounding and echoing throughout the office. I was depressed and drained.
After my two weeks, I cleaned out my desk, and left. (Taking as many pens and pads and whatever other office supplies I could get my hands on, with me. I heard that's common.)
The funny thing about all this is that it was in October. I had told my parents about wanting to quit and they had expressively told me I'd be an idiot to quit without something lined up and strictly forbade it. So I didn't tell them. I only slipped up a couple of times, Once my dad called me in the middle of the work day asking what I was doing and I told him I was at the dog park with Hopper. He asked why I wasn't at work and I froze. I told him that we had a half of day today for a conference. Good one. I lied to them. Everyday when my mom would ask me how my day at work was I'd tell her great and try to quickly change the subject so I wouldn't have to lie further. I was still looking for a job, and got a couple of calls, but nothing that paid money that I so desperately needed. I obviously couldn't ask my parents for money, so I pulled out my credit card to get by and kept searching.
Labels: business casual, interview, job search, NY, parents, quitting a job
Chapter Four: Putting It Into Words
College was a given for me. I had never even considered not attending. Blame my parents, but it was so deeply ingrained in me, I never really gave myself any other choice. I lived in a small town, riddled with stories of people who never made it out. I knew I had to leave, and I wasn't ready to go out on my own just yet. I utilized my guidance counselor to find what schools around North Carolina had majors in Film. I look back and wonder now why I chose to limit myself to NC. There are so many great schools out there, but for some reason I couldn't come to terms with leaving my home state. I was very prone to becoming homesick, and to my own discredit, really couldn't see beyond the borders. At that time, I knew that Los Angeles was in my future, but it seemed like a far-off place I would go after college. Me looking into the future resembled someone looking into another life really. But in NC, I got lucky.
I applied to four NC schools. Some with film studies programs, and one, an arts conservatory with a major in filmmaking called, North Carolina School of the Arts. I knew of this school for various reasons. My cousin had gone for dance, and I had spent a summer there doing one of their Summer Session programs. It was this school that would allow you to actually learn the technical aspects of filmmaking and give you a chance to actually make movies. It seemed like the place for me if I decided to go the filmmaking route. But I still wasn't sure. I secretly hoped that maybe my choices would be narrowed down by process of elimination.
I applied and waited. And waited. It was a stressful time as my friends started to be accepted to their schools of choice. And as fate would have it, my answers started rolling in as well. Letters of acceptance from all schools except NCSA. Cruel fate. I had almost completely lost hope, telling myself that it was for the best. And then I get a letter informing me of an interview at NCSA. An interview. I was a mess of nerves. How on earth could someone who knew next to nothing about movies convince a panel of professors that I belonged at their school. I pictured myself in a conference room of glaring men, (all closely resembling the man from my job shadow experience), rolling their eyes at my "ambition" and lack of knowledge of the field. How could I describe my excitement and feelings without sounding like a bumbling fool? And I didn't have dyed hair or tattoos or anything else that I have convinced myself was a necessity of someone who went to an art school. Today I find that irrational and very narrow minded, but to me then, it was legitimate fear I had. My lack of body art would make me stand out like a sore thumb, just screaming, "I don't belong here!"
The date rolled around and I found myself in the car with my mother driving to Winston-Salem, NC. I think I fidgeted the entire way, reading over copies of my application and essays I had sent in months earlier. Coming up with answers to questions that I could potentially be asked like, "Do you want to devote your life to this? How do you know?" or "What makes you stand out as an applicant to film school? What have you done to prepare for entering this world?" I tortured myself for four hours, too nervous to listen to music and too unsure of myself to ever be satisfied with my simulated answers.
But time doesn't stop for preparation. At a certain point, you are either ready or you're not. The fact that in my mind, so much was riding on this interview, that whether or not I was accepted to this school was going to determine my future, made things ten times harder for myself. It was that frame of mind made it impossible for me to ever feel prepared. It was a bed that I had made for myself. One that I was forced to lie in.
It is something that now I look back on and nearly laugh at my former self. I had basically been putting my entire future into one acceptance or denial. Theoretically, I was going to let one misstep discourage me from going after something that I really wanted. It's something I later learned was fatal in this industry, or any industry for that matter. You are going to fail from time to time. And you can't let failure discourage you. You use that experience to learn and grow and develop.
In the interview, I stuttered and was nervous and am pretty sure I called the man "ma'am". But they were very nice, and didn't seem completely astounded when I didn't start to recite all of Spielberg's films, alphabetically and by year. (Actually they seemed relieved.) I told them about my job shadow and watching film crews downtown. I think I even said something cheesy like, "I belong here". Of course the, "even though I don't have dyed hair or tattoos," was implied.
Nonetheless, I cried after the interview. I cried because of the relief I felt that it was over, and I cried because as nice as they were, I thought I had blew it in all my stuttering and movie unbuffness. I think I probably cried because I thought that I was never going to be a part of "it". That the dream was just that: a dream.
After all this talk of failure and discouragement, I think its important to note that I was later accepted. I can not express my relief enough. I had been in such a state of anxiety that I sincerely believe that if I had not been accepted, I would have thrown all my determination and hopes for the future away. Today, I probably would be a teacher or worse, an architect working at my dad's firm.
Now this is the part of the story where I made a choice that would forever change my life. As I was accepted, after all that, I'm sure you think it is clear what my choice would be. But it wasn't. I was beyond relieved that it was an option, and as strongly as I was leaning in that direction, I still needed that assurance that this is what I really wanted to do. Going to this college meant it was going to be real. I wouldn't be able to switch majors, I would graduate with an inflexible degree in filmmaking. I think this insecurity probably came from the adults around me being mystified that an eighteen year old already knew what they wanted to do for a living. None of my friends knew for sure. How could I?
Eventually, I made my decision. I got a hold of myself and remembered how I felt that day that I was "on the inside" at my job shadow. I realized that as old as I felt, at eighteen I was still very young and this opportunity probably wouldn't come around again. I gathered all my courage and self-esteem, and checked the box that said "Yes, I will be attending NCSA".
As I hope that this will one day be able to help someone who wants to get into film, I feel like it is important for me to point out once again that film school is not required. For me, I thought it was my ticket in. While it was one of the single greatest experiences of my life, when it comes down to it, film school is
not a ticket in. It can certainly help, as I will later get into, but by no means is it the definitive way to get to the other side of those barriers.
Labels: film school, getting accepted, interview
