reminiscence
Last night as we were walking home from choir rehearsal a girlfriend asked me if I ever thought about going back to work. I answered, "yeah, but I wouldn't go back to what I used to do, so I don't know what sort of work to go back to."
When I was 12 or 13 I wanted to be an actress. My parents indulged me with "acting lessons" and hoped I'd grow out of that phase. Yes, I eventually did grow out of it... some 20 years later. And I was never really an actress.
I went to college to study acting. I'm sure my parents thought that was about as useful as studying racing forms, but they didn't try to change my mind. In my first year and a half of college I was cast in exactly one thing, a children's theatre workshop piece in which I played an imaginary friend. I began to think that maybe this wasn't such a realistic way to make a living! Instead of changing my major to biology or library science, I decided that I could still endulge in whatever made me love the theatre by designing for it.
I came to NYC in 1989 to get a graduate degree in lighting design for stage and media (well, primarily stage -- it was a pretty traditional program and they gave media a mention but didn't really teach it: if you want to be a cinematographer go to film school.) I've been in NYC ever since, and I was never really a designer, either. I used to have a portfolio with still photos of some pathetic little plays that I lit, and some rather well drafted light plots, and a lot of conceptual drawings... but I threw all that stuff away when we were cleaning out in preparation for our son's arrival.
My drawing skills got me a job drafting for a company that lit TV shows. Mostly stuff shot on video, although most of that stuff is going digital now. News shows, talk shows, music video wraparounds -- lots of talking heads. A couple of sitcoms: The Cosby Show and a short-lived thing called "Soul Man" that starred Dan Ackroyd and a brood of kids. I think my favorite client was CTW. I still love Sesame Street and all the puppets that Jim Henson's workshop creates. In time I got promoted to production manager. Now if you know anything about entertainment production you might think that was a pretty big deal, but it was a toothless job. I made budgets, but with a template where you plugged in the number of man-hours you needed for a job, etc, etc and it spit out your budget. I "hired" people but never actually worked with most of them. I handled kit rentals. I did this for seven years.
I met some interesting people during that time, including the man who became my husband. He's an architect who works with media clients. He landed in this niche because he was a tech-theatre geek in high school who became a theatre carpenter in college and built sets for the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Metropolitan Opera. Then he yielded to pressure to get a "real"job and low and behold, he's now an architect. There's a story in our past (long past!), but that's for another post.
I left the PM job because I wanted to become a screenwriter. (HA! you say. You'd be right.) I did complete a screenplay, but by the time I got through the critical feedback phase, I'd lost interest in the revisions. I was working on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" at the time, and one of the executive producers, Ted Kotcheff, agreed to read it and tell me what he thought. He gave me a lot of technical points first on how to improve the dialogue and whatnot, but what killed my movie was his comment to the effect of "I don't find the protagonist sympathetic, and I don't know why anyone would care that this is happening to him." I realized at that point that I didn't care what happened to him anymore either, and he's resided in a file drawer ever since. (He's lucky I didn't throw him out with my old portfolio, but that day may come.)
I was an art department coordinator for L&O: SVU. Did you even know you HAD an art department coordinator on your last project? Then again, maybe you didn't have one. They tried to organize back in 2000 and the line producers eliminated the position to avoid having to pay union wages to an art department coordinator. I think they hire "assistants to the Production Designer" these days instead. I expect from a line producer's perspective having a union art department coordinator was like having to pay benefits for PAs. I hated that job. The only warm fuzzies I got in the entire year that I was there was when Dann Florik or Chris Meloni flirted with me in the production office. They didn't know who the hell I was, they were just doing their thing. Hey, it worked, though. I kept coming back until we finished the first season.
I think that was the job that made me realize that I was too old to enjoy working in TV and film anymore. I've worked on one feature film, a number of talking head shows, a pilot, and a serial. I've written one serial epsiode for shits and grins, and a feature that I never pitched. I designed I don't know how many little workshop productions, and did tech for I don't know how many more. It never made me rich, and it no longer made me happy. You can live on next to nothing when you're 23 and doing it for love. When you're 33 and you're not in love anymore it's a whole different ballgame. Now I'm closer to 43, and I'm beginning to find it romantic again -- now that I don't have to get up a 4am to do it!
When I was 12 or 13 I wanted to be an actress. My parents indulged me with "acting lessons" and hoped I'd grow out of that phase. Yes, I eventually did grow out of it... some 20 years later. And I was never really an actress.
I went to college to study acting. I'm sure my parents thought that was about as useful as studying racing forms, but they didn't try to change my mind. In my first year and a half of college I was cast in exactly one thing, a children's theatre workshop piece in which I played an imaginary friend. I began to think that maybe this wasn't such a realistic way to make a living! Instead of changing my major to biology or library science, I decided that I could still endulge in whatever made me love the theatre by designing for it.
I came to NYC in 1989 to get a graduate degree in lighting design for stage and media (well, primarily stage -- it was a pretty traditional program and they gave media a mention but didn't really teach it: if you want to be a cinematographer go to film school.) I've been in NYC ever since, and I was never really a designer, either. I used to have a portfolio with still photos of some pathetic little plays that I lit, and some rather well drafted light plots, and a lot of conceptual drawings... but I threw all that stuff away when we were cleaning out in preparation for our son's arrival.
My drawing skills got me a job drafting for a company that lit TV shows. Mostly stuff shot on video, although most of that stuff is going digital now. News shows, talk shows, music video wraparounds -- lots of talking heads. A couple of sitcoms: The Cosby Show and a short-lived thing called "Soul Man" that starred Dan Ackroyd and a brood of kids. I think my favorite client was CTW. I still love Sesame Street and all the puppets that Jim Henson's workshop creates. In time I got promoted to production manager. Now if you know anything about entertainment production you might think that was a pretty big deal, but it was a toothless job. I made budgets, but with a template where you plugged in the number of man-hours you needed for a job, etc, etc and it spit out your budget. I "hired" people but never actually worked with most of them. I handled kit rentals. I did this for seven years.
I met some interesting people during that time, including the man who became my husband. He's an architect who works with media clients. He landed in this niche because he was a tech-theatre geek in high school who became a theatre carpenter in college and built sets for the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Metropolitan Opera. Then he yielded to pressure to get a "real"job and low and behold, he's now an architect. There's a story in our past (long past!), but that's for another post.
I left the PM job because I wanted to become a screenwriter. (HA! you say. You'd be right.) I did complete a screenplay, but by the time I got through the critical feedback phase, I'd lost interest in the revisions. I was working on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" at the time, and one of the executive producers, Ted Kotcheff, agreed to read it and tell me what he thought. He gave me a lot of technical points first on how to improve the dialogue and whatnot, but what killed my movie was his comment to the effect of "I don't find the protagonist sympathetic, and I don't know why anyone would care that this is happening to him." I realized at that point that I didn't care what happened to him anymore either, and he's resided in a file drawer ever since. (He's lucky I didn't throw him out with my old portfolio, but that day may come.)
I was an art department coordinator for L&O: SVU. Did you even know you HAD an art department coordinator on your last project? Then again, maybe you didn't have one. They tried to organize back in 2000 and the line producers eliminated the position to avoid having to pay union wages to an art department coordinator. I think they hire "assistants to the Production Designer" these days instead. I expect from a line producer's perspective having a union art department coordinator was like having to pay benefits for PAs. I hated that job. The only warm fuzzies I got in the entire year that I was there was when Dann Florik or Chris Meloni flirted with me in the production office. They didn't know who the hell I was, they were just doing their thing. Hey, it worked, though. I kept coming back until we finished the first season.
I think that was the job that made me realize that I was too old to enjoy working in TV and film anymore. I've worked on one feature film, a number of talking head shows, a pilot, and a serial. I've written one serial epsiode for shits and grins, and a feature that I never pitched. I designed I don't know how many little workshop productions, and did tech for I don't know how many more. It never made me rich, and it no longer made me happy. You can live on next to nothing when you're 23 and doing it for love. When you're 33 and you're not in love anymore it's a whole different ballgame. Now I'm closer to 43, and I'm beginning to find it romantic again -- now that I don't have to get up a 4am to do it!
posted by jenn | 2:32 PM
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