SeeingEyeBlog

I just received a call from a company for which I did a corporate video this time last year, asking if I wanted to do another one this year. Getting the call sparked a desire to do a year end recap and take stock of my life a year down the road.

This time last year I was unemployed, having just gotten back from a month-long job out of state, and the corporate video was my first job in a month of looking for work. My unemployment was a result of my firm decision to only accept cinematography jobs, as opposed to doing lighting or camera assistant jobs. It was a tough gauntlet of bills and expenses with no way of paying, going from interview to interview getting rejected with lines from producers like, “…we liked your reel the best, but someone else offered to do the job with their own camera for free…”, all the while turning down work that I would have otherwise taken had I not willed that career step. My girlfriend of three years was breaking up with me in her heart, waiting another month before telling me about her decision.

In January, I was in the lowest point emotionally that I had ever experienced. But things were about to change professionally. I received two feature scripts within a month, and got both jobs. By March and April, I started shooting for NBA Television and Major League Baseball, making huge cash and got to meet a lot of great athletes. After wrapping the first feature, I went to work as a colorist at a post house, learning the ever-important craft of color-correction, a skill that will serve me well as digital cinematography becomes the norm. After coloring a feature film, I started working on a prime-time network television drama called Fashion House, and made a huge splash there as a great camera operator in the eyes of the directors with whom I was working. This was the first time I was working with seasoned, experienced directors as opposed to young upstarts. After Fashion House in August, I shot the second feature I was offered back in January, Yesterday Was a Lie, a black and white film noir which turned out beautifully. I returned to operate on the next television show, which turned out to be Wicked Wicked Games, on which I made some good friends with cast members. It’s airing now and I’m proud of my work. On a day off, I shot a quick short with a contact I met on one of the features, and I surprised myself when I told him on the phone that I didn’t want to be paid, since I was making enough on my TV show job. I could have easily made a quick $400, but I am finally able to “give back” or whatever you want to call it. I’ve been making a lot of money and have been able to completely obliterate my revolving credit, pay down my student loans, and start investing a lot of money.

Currently, I’m working on Saints & Sinners, another TV show following Fashion House and Wicked Wicked Games. This job will carry me through March, at which time I am in talks to shoot a feature film. After that, there is another film on the horizon for April or May. Overall, I think it’s been a great year for me professionally, and I am now way past many of my colleagues whose progress seemed far, far ahead of my own this time last year.

I’ve been working 16-hour days lately and today I had a well-deserved day off. I was in San Diego at my parents’ house so I had access to television (I work in entertainment but don’t have a cable subscription in LA). I watched some show on Discovery about the way things are made, and this episode featured apple juice and violins.

It is lamentable that automation and modernity have all but done away with quality craftsmanship. The fruits of our labors can rarely be embodied as a tactile product with a 500-year lifespan (I don’t know any luthiers, and many guitars are made in automated mills anyway). In previous generations, a man could create a magnificent instrument in his humble workshop, and live on essentially bread and water, with fruit or vegetables seasonally. Nowadays we work in offices with little to show for ourselves, and eat any kind of food regardless of season.

It’s interesting to speculate about the 16th century craftsman eating an apple at the end of harvest season, who, finishing a violin as he eats, may only have crafted two more violins by the time the next harvest offers him his next bite of apple. The apple and the violin were worthy of much higher appreciation when it required that much patience to enjoy them.