yet another political post that will get pulled from Cow –

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bob Zelin] “You have to do whatever it takes – especially in a competitive industry like we are in. “

Yet here, on the COW, people help the competition every day. Mentors help their future competition everyday. People posting How To and DIY videos/blogs help their competition every day. Other editors have helped me get work and I’ve helped other editors get work.

The picture you paint is only a one part of the whole. The world, and the industry, is changing Bob and you’ve become the inflexible dinosaur you warned against a decade ago.

[Rich Rubasch]

I loved the paper COW magazine…..oh the nostalgia.

What we have done is bring on eager graduates onto sets and let them experience many things, and we pay them. But I have not done formal internships because the rules are strict and we can’t maintain the amount of attention it requires, and the rigid time period involved. But the ones who do say “yes” and bring a positive attitude, regardless who they are, usually go on to do greater things, or even become part of our regular crew list. I have two or three of those I can think of, all are either African American or female.

Attitude is the winner here.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hey Andrew –
gee, I could be wrong, but it appears that a dinosaur like me is one of the only people who seem willing to assist others on these forums with storage issues. I could be wrong, but it appears that almost every company will not assist anyone on any of these forums unless 1) you give them a lot of money, and 2) you pay for their support contract, and 3) if you expect free support, you are getting nothing. Now granted, I do this in hopes that people might say “hey, this guy seems to know what he’s doing – maybe we should hire him to help us”. Which is exactly why I participate. I have been fortunate enough to have this happen on a regular basis, which is why I participate on Cow, and several other forums related to our industry. I don’t see the “warm friendly faces” of other manufacturers coming here (and other forums) to give out free advice. It’s the very reason people give presentations at user groups and trade shows. They do it to “promote their business and themselves” – and not to “give back to the community to help others”.
It appears that others, that are actively involved in on line training or reviews in technology, are not doing it because they are “nice guys” but to get lots of “hits” on things like YouTube and Instagram, to turn it into a business model. When you give accurate training and information, on things like how to do complex stuff in Davinci Resolve (for example) – the purpose of doing this is to present yourself as an expert, and in turn, people who need experts will hire you. To think that it’s being done solely for philanthropic reasons “to give back to the community” – well, I don’t think anyone does this.

And with that said – back to the original story – the intern who is willing to stick it out at Blackbird Studios in Nashville – you know, the kid that’s cleaning the toilets, and getting lunch. That kid, who sticks it out, will ultimately be given the opportunity to learn the equipment, to assist in sessions, to work with budget new artists that don’t have the budget to work with bigger engineers. And perhaps one of those young artists will start to make it, and take that intern and bring them on the road to mix for them live.

You guys should watch the wonderful movie “Sound City” – about this dumpy recording studio in Van Nuys. Many interns, and people that worked for crap money became famous from working at that studio, and went on to have thriving careers in the recording industry. It represents what “sticking it out” means. And not to kill the movie, but many of these “interns” who learned, eventually took Sound City’s client base, and Sound City eventually went under. That’s how it works – you work for someone, they make money from your labor, you learn the business, you learn THEIR BUSINESS, you open your own company, you steal their business, the “evil owners” (you know – the ones that made you clean the toilets) – they GO OUT of business. You win. Screw them. It’s war.

Keep fighting.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Tim Wilson]

[Rich Rubasch] “I loved the paper COW magazine…..oh the nostalgia.”

We loved it too! We talk about it all the time. We were wondering just yesterday about how we might revisit it at some point.

When Ronald had to step down for a few years for health reasons back in 2012, we pulled the plug on it. Our way of working together was too intimate and idiosyncratic for me to want to rebuild with someone else, and a 64-page magazine (plus regular 16-page supplements) is not a one-person operation — heck, I’m stupefied that we could do it with just TWO of us.

We were still moving upward in subscriptions and ad revenue at the time, and were days away from shipping our biggest issue yet when Ron hit the wall. I strongly, strongly encouraged him to stop, too, but we’d still be going today if Ron hadn’t gotten sick, no doubt in my mind whatsoever.

Creative COW Magazine is what took the other magazines out of print (we took out 5 competitors in the first year alone!), NOT the COW dot net. Vendors typically have completely separate budgets for print and web, and they’re often not even managed by the same person, sometimes not even the same department or ad agency. Nothing happening on the web was ever going to shake those print budgets.

And when I say “we took out”, I want to underscore that we mapped this out on a whiteboard. We picked our targets, planned our approach, and set dates by which we wanted them gone. We just had no idea how easy it would be, or how thoroughly we’d wipe some of these guys out. Many of them (DV, Millimeter, etc.) don’t even have web presences anymore.

Along the way, Ronald had a compelling, unique vision for how to build print magazines on the foundation of web communities, rather than having the web erode the print business. It was startling enough that Folio Magazine, the trade magazine of print publishers, named him to their Folio 40 Visionaries. The magazine that came out of this vision really, truly was special.

But that’s a story for another day.

Here’s the story for today, and really, to me, the only point of the story:

[Andrew Kimery] “The McBride’s aren’t being sued by former interns. They are being sued by a former employee that claims his termination was retaliatory because he reported the McBride’s illegally run internship program to the Department of Labor.”

This is so important that ima quote it again:

[Andrew Kimery] “The McBride’s aren’t being sued by former interns. They are being sued by a former employee that claims his termination was retaliatory because he reported the McBride’s illegally run internship program to the Department of Labor.”

What the McBrides were purportedly doing was ILLEGAL, both the theft of labor (which they’re trying to euphemize as “unpaid internships”) and the retaliatory firing.

I don’t care that it’s how we came up back in the day. I don’t care that that’s how they did it at Sound City. The way we came up was stupid, venal, exploitative, should never have happened, and IS NOW ILLEGAL.

Oh for the good old days when capitalists could steal labor from children! Eff that.

And 10 million EFFs to Billy Joel. He’s proud of stealing from Jimi Hendrix by sneaking into shows? Jimi worked himself literally to death(forget the stupid heroin stories — never happened) because his record deal gave him 1.5 cents per dollar (that’s right — one and a half pennies per dollar; the band split 3 cents on the dollar, so the other 2 guys got three quarters of a cent each) while his management was taking 40%. He got kidnapped by the mob and threatened with his life when he tried to open a recording studio in Harlem (remember that? didn’t think so) that would have allowed him to control his own revenue streams, so what he was left with was shows (including a “benefit” concert for those mob promoters that was basically playing for his own ransom).

And Billy Joel stole even THAT, and not just from Jimi. I’m glad to hear the story, though. Billy’s never getting another cent from me, and he’s gotten plenty over the years. But I’m not going to STEAL anything from him in the future, ffs. He’s dead to me, and that’s that.

That’s the thing. Nothing about his story is ennobling. It’s sickening, and I bet that’s not how he’s teaching his kids to come up, either. Sneaking into shows? You think he’s giving jobs to people that try to sneak into his shows? I bet his security has orders to tase them, if not dump them in the East River.

[Kylee Peña] “You can find the article in the COW library because it’s an important topic and the COW knows it’s important.”

Effin’ A. An Oral History of My Illegal Internships

(And yes, I’m hoppin’ mad and cussin’ up a storm.)

Here’s my favorite quote from it, my addition of boldface in the middle.

And I would really really hope that those people in the industry that benefitted from internships, either from gaining skills or getting a job, would recognize that no matter how well they managed to do, it would have been a better, more equal educational experience if they hadn’t been taken advantage of for free work. And by extension, that they would advocate for better, more equal educational opportunities for those coming up behind them instead of enforcing the status quo as a matter of paying ones’ dues.

THAT’s the point.

That Irish family in Hell’s Kitchen you heard about with 7 kids and 2 grownups in a tenement with a hotplate and one bathroom down the hall that 10 similar families shared? That was my father’s family, and his goal was for me to share my bathroom with many, many fewer people. LOL Maybe even have one inside my actual apartment.

That’s what we’re supposed to do, too — make sure that the next kid in line doesn’t get screwed like we did.

I don’t care if some kid is gonna wind up “softer” than me or whatever nonsense because she got paid minimum wage for her internship. PAY HER.

The gubmint has gone out of its way to protect moguls who want to keep stealing labor from kids. As Andrew points out, the guidelines are nice and crisp, and easier to follow than ever. So if you’re too lazy or greedy to color within the lines of the laws that protect outright theft, you really do need to get slapped.

Bob, I’m really glad that you’ve spent a career kicking down the walls that have kept knowledge locked away from customers, or that companies just haven’t had enough interest to care about sharing where people will actually see it. You helped me in my own business back in the day, and I appreciate you still banging away all these years later.

But man, I really do see the villains here being anyone who expects anyone else to work for them for free, NOT the people who are advocating for people getting paid (again noting that it’s not the interns themselves suing, but the guy who got fired for turning in the McBrides for breaking the law). Bosses can say all day long, “Yeah, but look what the kids are getting out of it,” and I guarantee that the kids wouldn’t be getting any less out of the experience if the employer was also following the law.

We at the COW may look like giants, but there’s only 3 of us, and there really were just 2 of us doing the magazine. We’ve spent our lives fighting much bigger, deeper-pocketed competitors, and we’re never going to be happy to hear about someone having to go through what we did. We’re hoping they can do better with their careers. We’re hoping we can help them do better.

And yes, by the way, if I’d seen this earlier, I’d have probably turned it off, but you’ve raised some interesting questions, and sparked some interesting insights so I’m provisionally leaving it on. Provisionally. ????

????

[Tom Sefton]

I thought in Sound City, that basically everyone came out of it with barely any money. The guy who owned the studio made next to nothing after rick springfield dropped him like a stone and all of his studio operators got to work on cool albums for a salary. The woman who ran the studio for years didn’t get a pension or a payout after the studio closed and the guy who swept up and cleaned toilets was the one in tears at the end because she, and he, had been treated so shabbily by a studio that had recorded some of the greatest albums in rock history? Yes analogue was beautiful, but it looked like that studio should have still been open if it had made some good decisions in the 90s.

The rags to riches story I do remember from a documentary is the Netflix made “Defiant Ones” about Dre and Jimmy Iovine, but they made money from owning labels and headphone companies, not from the lunch bringing/bog cleaning/sweeping up career path.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Patrick Sheppard]

Hi all,

Just chiming in here to share my point of view on this topic.

I agree with Mr. Rubasch about attitude being a determining factor. I don’t agree with the idea that people inherently “deserve” good, because that would imply that we are perfect and are owed good things because of that, as though good were somehow due to us as payment merely because we exist. I doubt anyone here would argue that we are perfect, and if you DO think that way then frankly you’re deceived. No, I believe that the good things that happen to us are gifts of grace, given because of mercy (grace is another way of saying help). No gift is deserved or owed, but is given freely. Otherwise it is not a gift, but a wage in return for what has been worked for. Every good gift should be humbly received as such, with a thankful heart and attitude.

In general, I agree that it’s better for employers to have paid internships rather than unpaid. I had two internships in high school related to my current profession, and both of them were paid. Both of them were valuable experiences, and a blessing, and totally undeserved, especially seeing now how I was back then.

I don’t agree with some of Mr. Zelin’s point of view, though it seems understandable why he (and many people) would think that way. At the same time, I believe I see part of what may be an underlying point of his. There are a lot of “whiny babies” in this world who believe that simply because they exist means they are entitled to good things, and this simply isn’t true. Entitlement is another word for deserving something, in which case the first paragraph above applies.

I would ask a person who believes they’re entitled: Are you perfect? (Let me help you out with that: the answer is no.) Then you do not inherently deserve good things. If you ARE perfect, then you DO deserve good things because you qualify for them on the basis of justice. But again, you are not perfect, and you therefore need grace, which is a freely given gift that must be received as such.

Otherwise you are an imperfect individual who is trying to TAKE what you believe you “deserve” on the basis of justice, rather than receiving grace as a free gift and being thankful for it. Most of the world is in the former category. Such people believe they are owed good and therefore try to take good, often from other people, which results in gross selfishness and all kinds of evil against others, which in the end results in evil against the taker as well. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked: Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” Believe what you want about what I just said. It is the truth.

As for leveling the playing field, I very much disagree with this point of view and the systems and programs in place to support it, because it is man’s attempt to use government to regulate and even force people into doing what should be their free choice to make. This doesn’t mean I’m against certain types of people having opportunities to advance. No no!!! Not at all! I’m against big government, as were our founding fathers (and if you disagree with that then I encourage you to see the wealth of information available to you on David Barton’s website wallbuilders.com).

What I’m saying is that in order to succeed in life, we must humble ourselves and acknowledge that nobody inherently deserves good, but rather that we reap what we sow in EVERY area of life. Whatever conditions a person may begin their life in, with the right vision, and with reliance on God as their source rather than man or government, they CAN come up and out of even the most adverse conditions and succeed, and do so without doing evil to others but instead actually getting to a place where they can be a blessing and a help to other people. Incidentally, such help could include providing opportunities like paid internships and employment for others with the right attitude (notice I said attitude, not skill set).

God “raises up the poor out of the dust and lifts up the oppressed from the dunghill to make them sit with princes and inherit a throne of glory.”

I have a real example of this that I personally know about: In the city I grew up in, I learned about three African American men who all grew up in the same housing project and knew each other. These three men took three entirely different paths in life. One of them became a world heavyweight boxing champion. One of them, last I saw him, was a food server at a mall eatery takeout restaurant. The third one was my former employer, which is how I came to know of this story. We’ve since lost touch, but thus far he has been my favorite employer, and also a good and generous (and very patient) friend. He used to talk to me about his drive to succeed and the things he would do to excel at the talents he had, and into adulthood he owned a very lucrative business (where I was employed at the time). We often walked across the street for lunch at the aforementioned mall, to the eatery where his childhood acquaintance/friend filled our divided styrofoam containers with our food selections.

Did these three men all have the same opportunities? Maybe yes, maybe no.

But what did that depend on? Their circumstances?

No. We’ve already established that they came from the same beginnings, and they all had different levels of success (my former boss lived quite well, and the world heavyweight champion was of course a multi-millionaire). So what was the determining factor? I submit to you that it was their VISION, and their resulting attitude (or lack thereof) of thanksgiving and their level of expectation. “Without a vision, the people perish.”

If this is the case (and I believe that it is), then the responsibility lies entirely with the PERSON, NOT with the government, to determine what opportunities that person does or does not have in life, as well as what they do or do not achieve, and what level of success they experience.

Receive that for what it’s worth to you. Whether you realize it or not, I just handed you a huge solid gold nugget. ????

[Mark Suszko]

Scrappiness and will to work are essential to succeed. But they don’t guarantee success. You can be the hardest-working, most deserving and ruthless Randian SOB out there and still not catch a break. You can be totally undeserving and have it fall into your lap. The odds favor the prepared and the striving. But the winners in the race often don’t recognize that we don’t all get an even start. And the system has evolved to not be a level playing field. leveling the playing field is not about entitlement, except that you are entitled under our laws to have the same shot as anybody else, and the rest is still up to the individual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K5fbQ1-zps

I like this video, but the referee should have also said near the end: “take four steps back if you have 2 x chromosomes.” Because women HAVE been handed an uneven playing field, in this business. There’s no denying it. And it won’t fix itself. We have to take active steps to do it, or it won’t get done.

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[Ron Lindeboom]

Wow, Bob, when did we pull your posts? I haven’t done one in many years and Kathlyn says she hasn’t touched anything but outright spam. That leaves Tim who wears iron undies and loves to watch the mayhem ensue in the wake of your posts. (Truth be told, I always love to watch it, too.) ????

So, if you were going for a clickbait title, it worked — though it’s not very accurate. ????

I hope you’re doing well, Bob.

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

[Bob Zelin]

one thing we ALL can agree on –

LONG LIVE THE COW !

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Todd Terry]

… and good to see Ron making a B&M appearance!

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com