Author: Teel

I think I’m losing some of the little respect I hold for the Academy Awards. Take a look at this year’s nominations and see for yourself what I mean. Or rather, don’t see what I mean. Missing are outstanding performances by Gene Hackman and Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums, Waking Life and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in the new Best Animated Feature category, Come What May from Moulin Rouge for best original song (this one I knew wouldn’t be nominated, but because of a technicality – the song was originally conceived for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, but never used; since it was not originally for Moulin Rouge, it is not considered an original song, even though it was never used before), and The Anniversary Party for something.

I’m sure there were many other Oscar-worthy performances this year. Guy Pierce in Memento, and Planet of the Apes for makeup and costume design at the least. I don’t know. There were a heck of a lot of things that could have at least been nominated. I’m looking forward to the MTV Movie awards, anyway.

So I was taking a look at this article over at ZDNet about the underemployment of countless hordes of former tech workers. Now, these people have MBAs and years of industry experience and have developed skills and experience related to the high-tech industry, which are mostly things that I never bothered to do, but I still identify with them to a certain degree. Right now many of these people are finding that they cannot get jobs in the fields they are trained for, at the income levels they expect, and that they cannot afford to be unemployed either, so they’re ending up in blue collar jobs and service jobs and retail jobs they haven’t considered since High School.

I have always come at that sort of issue from a sortof different POV. Like somehow because of my broad-based interests, massive potential, and the speed at which I learn new skills, on some levels I think I consider most jobs in most industries to be underemployment for me. Obviously, I don’t have the educational background many jobs are looking for (nor the experience for that matter), but I have always known that there is nothing I can’t do if I set myself to do it. This in mind meant that as soon as I saw that real people were living their and raising their families and still capable of happiness while earning $7 and $8 an hour, I knew that as long as I was basically going to be underemployed no matter what field I decided to work in, I may as well just find something easy and finite to pay the bills and spend the rest of my time trying to live up to my potential.

So, when I got “disqualified” from ASU, I wasn’t motivated to try to get back in ASAP. Or at all. (Except that since then I’ve spent more time defining what “living up to my potential” includes, I now kinda want to go through ASU’s Fine Arts program. Oh, and find a good film school.) Instead I just worked my 40hours/week at jobs that I knew weren’t going anywhere, and have tried to spend the rest of my hours pursuing things that make me happy and fulfilled.

So, I’ve never really expected to be fulfilled by my “real job”, and I haven’t been disappointed. Mostly what I expect from it is a steady paycheck and for it to not get in the way of the rest of my life. All these dot-com kids who for a few short years were earning huge sums of money to do what they loved are now facing the same hard truths that most people face right out of college; it is hard to find work that relates to the field that you have trained for, especially that you find fulfilling and rewarding. Luckily, since I never really believed that the modern American job market was any good at supporting healthy attitudes towards work and career and didn’t bother trying to seek out some mysterious full-time job that would cater to my personal ambitions and goals, I’m not in that disillusioned state where I wonder what happened to all the “good” jobs – I’ve understood for a good long time that the “good” jobs are few and far between unless you find business itself fulfilling.

Wait. I feel like I’m babbling now. Can’t remember what point I was trying to get across, if any. Maybe something about being satisfied by setting my expectations lower. Maybe something about ralagating “work” to something I tolerate so that I can spend the rest of my time doing things I enjoy. Maybe something about how someday I hope to be able to earn money from all my other endeavors, perhaps enough that I can work on them full-time someday. Maybe nothing at all.

I’m finally at the very fun part of having this sort of cold where my congestion is almost (but not quite) cleared up, and my lungs have figure out that they don’t like being filled with fluid and mucous and it’s time for me to cough and cough and cough it all up, one little bit at a time. Hooray.

More interesting and somehow worthwhile to me than getting a digital still camera is getting a Digital Video camera. In the case of Digital Video cameras, the professional level cameras (at upwards of us$150,000 apiece, (see George Lucas for details)) do match the quality level necessary to produce quality prints. While I cannot afford to work with professional-level equipment, there are several pro-sumer level MiniDV cameras that record DVD-quality video, and I would be glad to work on that level until I can break into the industry and get some real financial backing. I’ve already begun work on putting together some ideas for story and some people for the beginnings of a movie production company, and I’ve set myself dates I’d like to get certain goals related to that completed by. Reasonable dates based on an understanding of the personal expenses involved.

Because I know there are people out there making independant movies, and I know that they’ve got much bigger budgets than I do, and more manpower and more experience, but they’re doing it, and some of them are successful. And even the ones who aren’t financially successful are at least getting things done that they care about, and I’ve got these creative drives that I’ve just got to let out, and just getting something completed is success.

So, even if I can only afford to start with one camera and one mic and I can’t afford to pay my actors or buy fancy tailored costumes or build huge, elaborate sets, I bet I can still tell a story, I bet I can still entertain. I bet it’s more than I can do with a digital still camera, and I bet it leads to a life possibly more interesting than the one I’ve been leading. I figure worst case I can sell my movies online, and offer some video content for free, and best case I can hone my skills and make an excellent product down the road that I can sell to a studio and get contracted to do bigger, better projects.

Or maybe I’ll get into it and get a couple of projects done and decide I don’t want to do it anymore, or I don’t want to make a business or a career out of it at all. Who knows? I’m just saying. This is my next big thing. This digital video. This new vista of production. I wonder if I’ll get flak for not being classically trained. I wonder if I’ll get praise for doing well without going to film school. I wonder if I can bring this all together. It’s months and years away from me though, so I’m trying not to wonder too much.