Work

I just finished editing a three-week long, intense coporate video shooting/editing project from hell for a local credit union, that didn't have a script (or even an outline), so I bid the thing hourly without knowing exactly how many hours the thing was actually going to take!  The thing ran, I'd say, at least 40 hours beyond the targetted hourly budget.  In the interest of being a nice guy and collecting the final payment, I'm not going to haggle with them on price for this project, but, if they come at me with a project like this again, I'm going to request an exact outline, so I can generously budget the hours in my favor, and, if they can't afford it, I'll pass--move onto the next schmuck... Parts of the project were actually kinda fun.  They had me cut together ten movie clips, each of which introduces their VP speaker that comes up to the podium.  This was an in-house project, and isn't going to be shown on youtube or distributed, and I had them sign a waiver that absolves me from any copyright infringement liability.  They had me use movies like the James Bond series, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Twister, among others.  I found I really enjoy cutting together narrative stories!  I think I see a career in L.A. cutting movie trailers, if I meet the right connection out there... The other three parts of the project were 19 employee-acted skits that illustrate the company's service promises to their customers (and these people are NOT actors), a movie trailer loop that will be playing while people are filing into the banquet hall before the sales presentation, and a member testimonial video, where customers talk about how great this credit union is. We all try to do something with our talents that makes us money.  Since I was 10 years old, I gravitated toward visual storytelling, and before that, I wanted to be a comic book artist.  So far, I haven't found anything else in this world that suits my talents in this area, or if it suits my talents, it doesn't pay well enough.  I've tried the corporate paper-shuffler thing, the physical labor thing, and nothing really compels me as much as this strange artform, so I guess I'm stuck in it!  It's just a question of marketing and bidding myself more aggressively and intelligently... Hope all is well with all of you.