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How’s business right now? (Also, what and where?) And how are YOU doing?
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I’m a staff video producer here in Seattle, WA. My company is a medium-sized B2B technology consulting firm with offices all over the globe. My workdays can vary wildly from week to week. Sometimes, I edit footage from international vendors, and sometimes I shoot materials for agencies that are working with other groups in the company. However, for most of my projects, I handle everything from shoot to finish (motion graphics, audio sweetening, color grading, etc.). I also edit a lot of self-shot videos from co-workers and executive types.
Before corvid-19 hit the Seattle area, I was supposed to cover events for International Women’s Day, shoot some interviews in a couple of high schools and conduct some interviews for our companies 20th-anniversary celebration. All of those activities are now off the table. Following in the footsteps of every other tech company, we are now on voluntary quarantine, and all workers are encouraged to work remotely and practice social distancing.
In the past week and a half, I’ve had a few interviews in the office, so working from home wasn’t an option. While coming in for these shoots, I noticed that there weren’t many people in the building, so I just kept coming in (to edit). There have been a few days where I haven’t seen another soul on my floor, so I’ve felt pretty safe working here. I still practice good hygiene habits (washing hands thoroughly and frequently, wiping down work surfaces, not touching my face, etc.), and I’ve been backing my work up on a portable hard drive every night, in case the city goes on lock-down.
I have a powerful workstation at home, so it wouldn’t be hard to do the same work there as I do in the office, but my ISP is Comcast, so I would miss the stable and reliable high-speed internet connection that I enjoy at work.
[EDIT] I meant to sum this up by answering one of the questions in the headline… how is business? It doesn’t seem to be slowing down yet. As people in other parts of the company look for ways to engage with the rest of the business, and share information in more intimate and immediate ways than newsletters and mass emails, I imagine they’ll turn to producing more self shot videos and podcasts. I think there’s going to be a lot to do in the months ahead.
Shawn
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Well, I am the crazy one in this group, and my mindset is nothing like most of you. My hero’s are people like video trade author Bob Turner, storage pioneer Charles McConathy who started ProMAX, and Jack Calaway who was instrumental in helping start ISC, which became the GVG Edit Controller, and Calaway Editing.
These men DIED for our business. This was their life. They had assorted horrible health problems, and they KEPT GOING, until death. . I always tell everyone that my dream is to be at some expensive steak house in Las Vegas during NAB, and I have “the big one” – and my face lands in the plate of steak and mashed potatoes with gravy. That will be the last image of me for anyone, for eternity. Bob, dead, with gravy all over his face.I have been moderately busy, but my business these days involves isolation (not voluntarily) with clients all over the world, while I use https://www.teamviewer.com to remote into clients to resolve their editing and storage issues. I currently live in tourist town Orlando, Florida, and I have no fear of Coronavirus. I just cancelled my Las Vegas reservations today, and only because everything is closed in Las Vegas. I had the tickets – I would have gone anyway.
At this point – I realize – all that matters is what we do – we make television, films, movies, etc.
And I have the same feeling toward people in the audio industry. That is life. That is what is important in life. If “we” didn’t exist (the musicians, the actors, the writers, the dancers, directors, composers, the set designers, the wardrobe people, the audio mixers, the cameramen, the grips, the gaffers, the craft service people, and of course, the editors, color graders, assistants, graphics artists, 3D animators, etc, etc) – well, we would all be living in a cave, hunting for fish and squirrels, and trying to make the best of it. If there is no “entertainment” there is no life.If everyone involved in the entertainment industry was involved in finding the cure for cancer, we would all be healthy, and we would all be miserable. We are what makes the world go around.
So stop all this whining, and get back to work.Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
[Bob Zelin] “I have no fear of Coronavirus. I just cancelled my Las Vegas reservations today, and only because everything is closed in Las Vegas. I had the tickets – I would have gone anyway. “
Good for you and presumably you have no fear of spreading the virus to other people too?
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I’m ore in the shooting end than post but do some post. THe shooting end is dead for me – everything has been cancelled for the foreseeable future. There is a little bit of post in my pipeline but its for a biz client that has been shutdown along with a lot of other businesses by local order, so that project is in limbo.
I think we’re in a long haul situation at least in the NYC/ northeast . I’m still open for business, but basically zero happening where I am. -
[Bob Zelin] “So stop all this whining, and get back to work.”
This is seriously deranged, even for you. Almost everyone on this thread IS working, and the ones who aren’t working aren’t working because the job is gone. It’s just not there. There’s no more need to sniff around a movie set looking for DIT work than there is to fly to Las Vegas to look at vendors displays. There will be no postproduction equipment vendor displays to look at in Las Vegas in April, and there may not be a movie being shot anywhere in the world for considerably longer after that.
I also resent you bringing up Bob Turner in the way you did, and I know he’d have hated it too. I’m surely the last industry guy to visit Bob at his home in Scituate, MA before he passed away. I drove down from Avid’s headquarters (then in Tewksbury) from my home in a Boston with a full Avid Xpress Studio for him, with the Pro Tools hardware. I spent the day setting it up for him, and he died very shortly after that, before he could write anything up. I had a lovely day with him and his wife, and I can tell you for a fact that if he thought he could have lived one more day by stopping work, he’d have given up every moment in his career in a heartbeat.
What the hell do you think we talked about all day? THIS. Yeah, storytellers are the reason we don’t live in caves, but dying stinks, and dying early for the job is obscene.
(Shocking to me now to recall that he was only 54, quite a bit younger than many folks here.)
Look, if you want to die, nobody’s stopping you. It might be nice if you didn’t kill anyone else who might care to stay alive. It might also be really nice if you could at least bother to read the posts you’re replying to, becauses not one person here wants to be out of work or even underworked. We’re all here because we’re more alike than not in wanting to go until we drop….but if there’s nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to go.
Teamviewer is a nice tip, though. Thanks for that.
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[Bob Zelin] “These men DIED for our business. This was their life. They had assorted horrible health problems, and they KEPT GOING, until death.”
While most of the time I appreciate your acerbic wisdom here on the Cow, in this instance I think you’re on the wrong side of logic.
Life is so much more than the work we all do. And there’s endless stories of individuals who have major regrets later in life because they put their work above all else.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
Hmmm…Bob rattled a few cages? Ok. Really, this is our career path. We could work in restaurants, in hospitality or just about anything else. We are all in this together…and worldwide, not just in our communities.
So, Bob, yes, we all love what we do and we choose to do it because it fits us just fine.
But some of us are still on our way, making choices and swimming thru life. This kind of attack, by a virus, has us all reeling, and we have to acknowledge that now is the time to be real about what we do, the foundation we all have laid in our career, and encourage others that the end of this thing is continued prosperity.
Because storytelling, and the means to do so, is what we do.
And Bob, we need you to help us do that once this is all over.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Ok Greg, there are those who served their family well, loved life and did exactly what they wanted until death, and were applauded for doing what they were called to do.
I can see myself editing until I can’t move my fingers anymore, or maybe even further. Because it’s in my blood now…the story, where is it? Where is the sound bite that moves the spirit? That is why we do it.
Sure, it’s a career. But if it is just a career for you, (not you specifically, Greg) you haven’t edited or produced the one piece that connects your heart with the story and makes a connection that nothing else can invoke.
Bob’s specific references may have been off base, but what he’s saying, as usual, has merit.
But for goodness sake, be smart and safe…it’s crazy out there!
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
[Rich Rubasch] “Sure, it’s a career. But if it is just a career for you, (not you specifically, Greg) you haven’t edited or produced the one piece that connects your heart with the story and makes a connection that nothing else can invoke.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do and I feel privileged to have the job of storytelling. It’s endlessly rewarding. At the same time though, I’ve been doing this a long time. I began my career in your town of Madison almost 29 years ago working for Jon Aleckson. He taught me the craft of editing.
But as I get older, there’s a realization that life is so much more than work. And I never want to lose that perspective. I don’t want to be yet another person with regrets that I missed out on some of the joys of life because I was trying to shape yet another story.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
Nobody doubts your commitment, Bob, or your work ethic. And if that’s how you wanna go – face down in the gravy boat – I’d miss you, but it’s your call.
The thing about your analogy is, you having a grabber at the buffet is all on you. Like I said, we’d miss you and tell grand lies about you while remembering you after, but we’d be personally unaffected in our own health, as would our loved ones.
This is no longer a case where the only question is about or own medical destinies, though. Everything that’s happening now during this crisis is about the health of everyone I love, and the loved ones of people I know and will never know. It is for the literal good of all that the plugs have been pulled and everything has to take a break for a bit. And if careers have to suffer, well, that’s what’s gonna happen. Today I got the word I’m on paid standby at home for the duration, (That robot camera we put in is filling in for a lot of us and we don’t need three guys to watch it ) and to an old Fire Horse like me it feels dammed weird to sit here at home, hear the fire bell, and not work. So believe me when I say I can empathize with your feelings about your craft and your dedication to it.
But FWIW, … and this is in no way a knock on you or your stance, because I deeply respect you – but, your heroic notion of dropping in your traces like that? I lived it with my dad. Nothing at all romantic or heroic about dying at your desk. At all. The security guard who found him had no idea how long my dad had been laying there when dad went in on a Saturday, alone, to grind out some more stuff on his own time so it would be ready to present on Monday. He wasn’t doing it to impress anybody. He was doing it because he’d spent decades putting three kids thru college and paying off a mortgage and only now, at the waning end of his career, was he able to concentrate on making his own retirement fund nut, catching up after helping his entire family all his life. The EMT’s restarted his heart but his magnificent brain had been oxygen-starved for untold time and he spent about a week in a vegetative coma before my mom had to sign waivers and take his breathing tube out by her own damn self because he hadn’t signed a Medical Will and the hospital was afraid of a lawsuit for unplugging him. They made my mom do it. My mom. There was nothing (expletive) noble or heroic about any of it. All it was was tragic. At his wake, people said a few nice things about his stupendous work ethic, but what everyone was thinking, I believe, was: “what a useless way to die, for something as ephemeral as an office project deadline”. I know I was. He still would have maybe had that heart attack on Monday, but at least people would have been around him and might have kept him alive with CPR until rescue came… and my two younger kids would have known their grandfather. Which brings us back to this goddamn virus. And how I don’t want any part of that kind of experience for my family, or anyone else’s. Not even yours. I wish you only health and happiness and that that face-plant into the Beef Wellington or whatever is a long, long way off still.
Right now, we got bigger things to worry and think about.
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