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Off Topic: Best and Worst Jobs.
As I have admitted before, I am not really a “pro” by the standards of this board. What actual for hire work I have done has been mainly in location sound recording (as can be demonstrated by my meager IMDB listing).
I work mainly on my own projects or projects of like-minded artists I know. However, from time to time, friends have suggested I take for hire editing jobs (although I have told them that most clients looking for a pro would have a siezure once they saw my methods).
The two for-hire editing jobs I did take were rather boring talking-heads affairs that were not only tedious, but due to my greeness in negotiating the pay, did not benefit me that well finacially for the man hours I had to put into the gigs (OCD clients demanding crazy changes and then wanting me to put it back the way I originally cut it).
However, with so many folks who do this for a living gathered in the room (or on the forum). I thought it might be cool to lighten the mood and get some great horror stories or wonderful moments. I would certainly find it informative.
So if any body wants to share, What was your most horrible experience and/or most satisfying job?
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14 Replies
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Duuuude, you do not want to go down this road. Too many stories to tell. It will get nasty!
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Awwww, c’mon. I like to read about others suffering.
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Well was this ONE TIME… I’m waiting on this certain company to come out with the newest version of editing software and then it was like PUNKED! NO SOURCE MONITOR FOR YOU!
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[Daniel Frome] “Well was this ONE TIME… I’m waiting on this certain company to come out with the newest version of editing software and then it was like PUNKED! NO SOURCE MONITOR FOR YOU!”
Hmmmm, that sounds strangely familiar. This company must be pretty small and was just trying to save a few bucks by eliminating the source monitor. You have to cut a few corners when you are trying to compete with the likes of Apple…..oh wait, I get it.
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Yeah they shouldn’t have cut corners. At the very least the could have put those famous beveled edges on it and left it in.
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Political commercials, especially negative ones. Total fun. Ominous music, headline clips, stock b-roll of white guys in a smokey room… Classic! I did a couple positive ones already this year for primary season (victorious, thanks to me) and I’m looking forward to the end of summer when it kicks up again.
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My worst job was working in the Chicken Plant in Athens, GA during college. After two weeks I happily took a job paying $2 less an hour somewhere else. Oh, wait… video jobs? They’re all gravy after that.
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Best job was travelling for ten weeks around Europe in the summer of 1984 recording a doco with the Australian Youth Orchestra. 90 odd musicians aged from 16 to 24 and 80% female. I was 27 and single. I recorded concerts at the London Proms in the Albert Hall, The Edinburgh Festival and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam amongst the many great concerts. The tour started in the historic Adriatic town of Dubrovnik.
Apart from the drinking and partying it was also the first broadcast program ever to be recorded and editing using digital sound equipment. Sony F1 encoder to betamax recorder and a modified edit suite with an RM440 a Umatic and a beta deck with parallel control.
Worst job was outside the industry stuffing chickens and making coleslaw by hand in a BBQ chicken shop.
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Heh.
Well, we mostly drill for oil in the part of the world I live in. Spent one day thinking it might be my last, 80 feet up in the thin air on a “service” rig, wearing a (ha, ha) “safety belt” that looked like it was made by slave labour 300 years ago, cracking and retrieving the drill stem from a deep hole. Never again. Couldn’t move for a week following that adventure. Ruined a nice set of work clothes, too, as I was being continuously showered with raw crude and petroleum jelly. When a company refers to the new Resolve GUI as “slicker than a greased seal”, I know that feeling from personal experience, so it must be pretty good.
The worst post project I’ve ever worked on was a stimulant-fuelled orgy of frolic in comparison. Among the “best”, after that, there is such a narrow shade of difference as to be indistinguishable. And I have seriously lost count because I’ve been doing this for well over three decades, now.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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Non post: Shrimp boat. My hands were never the same again.
Post: Very early in my career I was hired by a pharma company and when I sat down to look at the footage I found it consisted of “scientists” burning a series or pigs with a butane torch in order to test some damn cream. They had thoughtfully surgically removed the pigs vocal chords so they didn’t have to listen to them scream. I stood up almost as soon as I had sat down. Only editing job I’ve ever flat walked out on.
Tim
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