What do you do for a living?

[Maxine Capilli]

Originally Posted by Mike Teutsch

Wow, sounds pretty impressive to me! Hope you get a lot from this site and I'm sure you will be able to help a lot of us out too!

I don't envy you for the tasks ahead of you, but you sound more than capable of handling it all. Welcome to thia forum.

Mike

I'd be glad to help any way I can. I may not know everything under the sun, but what I do know, I would like to think I'd know it very well.

I realise when you do work especially on stuff related to media, you really need to be a good team player and get on with a task with the thought that you have to work with others and that everything you do, much as you can be good at one thing, is really the result of a good team spirit at work in everyone. I can see this happening from reading the posts here, everyone's really helpful.

The tasks I've undertaken has resulted in a lot of interesting experiences, some positive and yes, some negative. One was being directed by an unreliable contact here in Paris to a French "aristocrat" lawyer in the pursuit of setting up an office and getting ripped off by him for quite a large sum after months of waiting and with no office registration in sight, for preparing just a simple liaison office (you would expect with the "culture", the history of the French Revolution and the beheading of aristocrats, they would be above this! :D I'm joking badly of course, I have a lot of other really great friends with aristocratic background, although that means nothing much to them now except a colourful history). Actually, most French businesses are set up by an "accountant" in a matter of two-three weeks!

I have learnt a lot, but now tend to look at the work here very much like any work in Asia (and it can be worse there if you don't have an established and reliable network) with the exception that you have to know what the regulations are and worse, the accounting system. <groan>

Thank you for your kind welcome!
--maxcap

[Lisa Williams]

Hello Everyone!

I just came to this site a few days ago looking for help with a camera problems and I have been astounded by the graciousness and helpfullness of everyone here. Thank you!

I have added this site to my favorites and am sure to make it a frequent stop.

What do I do for a living? Well, I do many things....but I guess we should start at the beginning.

Many, many, many, many years ago.....when I was 16...I went to a job fair and met a person from a newspaper in the nearest big city. We had a long talk and I went to their office the next day for a tour. Next thing I knew I was hired as a local correspondent. I enjoyed that for the next two years and only left because I was headed off to college.

In college I was determined to be a wonderful newspaper reporter until I started taking the classes and didn't fare too well in any of them. Then in the second semester of my Freshman year, I took a required broadcasting class. Love, true love, was found.

I have never liked school much. Everything came difficult to me, until broadcasting. I aced every class, I did extra credit, I loved every minute of it.

I worked for the student radio and tv station all I could. And eventually I found some actual jobs. I had a radio station call me after hearing me on the student radio station and asked if I would like a job just from hearing my voice. I did that for a year on weekends and EARY mornings. Then I went on to become a television reporter through an internship for a local CBS affiliate.
That lasted for two years and ended after a weekend of covering murder stories and showing up to an accident where I recognized the fatality.

So where do I go from here? I had done paper, radio, and tv. Cable!

I started another internship at a cable company in their local ad sales department. After 9 months, I graduated college and walked in for my half day of work there and they offered me a full time position. ( They had fired someone that morning)

So in one week I graduated college, got married, and started a full time job.

Now, ten years later, I am still working in cable advertising. I recently moved to a new company and am production manager and produce and sell advertising in Nebraska and Montana. We use the Canon XL1s and edit on Adobe Premier Pro and Photoshop.

The man I married was also in broadcasting and he is working as an engineer at the local abc affiliate.

When we are not at work, we are taking care of our two children, and editing at home, with our very SMALL company KWIK productions. We do picture videos mostly and just recently doing well doing high school highlight reels of sports. They shoot them anyway, we just edit together highlights and make copies.

And because we're not busy enough my husband and I have "date night" once a week and go together to dj weddings.

Whew.....another winded story from me on the great plains...sorry, there's no other video people out here to talk to .......

Lisa

[Heath McKnight]

Lisa,

Welcome aboard! Sounds like you've done a lot! And we're always here to help the best we can, so enjoy!

heath

[James Wong]

Hi there,

At the moment I'm unemployed, but continuing my aspirations in video and editing.

I've worked various jobs, mostly in the video game industry (beta / standards testing). I have been out of work since April, went to Japan for one month in May (my great love affair, as my friend has once told me) and have been looking for work since.

Recently got a Mac (my first, in July) and am halfway through an FCP 5 book for Level 1 Certification. Although I'm not working, I am still studying and completing work on my next little music video while sending out the resumes and hoping.

Cheers,
James

[Lorinda Norton]

Hi James,

Along with good writing skills you seem to have a positive attitude. That ought to get you a job soon. :) Here's hoping with you, and welcome to DV Info!

[Heath McKnight]

James,

Glad to have you aboard! Good luck with everything! (And I know you'll dig Final Cut Pro!)

heath

[Shaughan Flynn]

My education is that of a high-school dropout :)

I am a professional photographer doing mostly product work. I do landscape but the living is made in product photography :) I also paint and draw and do 3D art on the computer. I have always had a passion for films. Some of my favorite photography is in films.

Back in the mid 70s I directed some summer stock theater in Virginia.

About 8 months ago, I was commisioned to provide a 3D model of a movie camera. I live about a mile away from Panavision and called them up to ask if I could come over and photograph one of their cameras and measure it as well. They graciously accorded me an invitation to do this.

My wife came along to assist me in this and became very interested in the camera. She quizzed the Panavision folks that were assisting about it and ended up taking their classes on the camera. Having done all of that she decided it would be fun to persue the role of cinematographer.

So she took a ton of classes at UCLA extension and has shown a very serious talent for this field of endevor. I warned her that this was a VERY tough business to get into but assured her that I would support her in this endevor.

She is a realist and understands what she is up against and has a great attitude about all of it.

She decided to get a video camera, a Mac with FCP and hijack some of my lighting kit to shoot some short films. She originally bought a Panasonic GS250 and did some very nice work. Mostly montages set to music. But I could see she was frustrated with the GS250 and so we set out to look for an upgrade and settled on the Z1U.

She has decided she wants to try her hand at some narrative shorts and recruited me to write and direct them so I have written three 5 minute shorts that we will start filming next month so that she can build up her reel and round it out a bit more.

The end.

:)

[Lucas Morrow]

Hello everyone, first post...great site.

I'm a Videographer for the Air Force.

To tell the truth I came in having no idea the job even existed! Not very many people have the luxury of creativity in the military. With unlimited training, free school, and nice equipment, who could ask for more!!!

I do mostly Documentaries, but currently im working on getting into Combat Camera.

-Morrow

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Lucas Morrow

Hello everyone, first post...great site.

I'm a Videographer for the Air Force.

-Morrow

Hey can you take me for a jet ride!

[Stephen Finton]

I make other people rich besides me. :(

[Jay Kavi]

I work in a middle school in an after school program and teach basic film to at risk youth.

its a lot of fun, believe it or not :)

[Sandro Kohler]

Hi there dvi-users
Last time I`ve logged in this forum was march this year. Since then for me a lot was going on, and my english is as bad as ever;) Last march I wrote my first posts to this forum, because I start my interest for film, cut, dv and all the things around that. in may I quited my job as a graphic designer and in june I was starting my new job on a one hour tv show broadcasting company as a cutter. wow cool that was fast. It`s not really a big thing like in the states (It`s a erotic lifestyle show;), but I`ve never learned more in so little time about the things I want to do the rest of my life. After this barerly 3 months in this job I stand on completly different point of my business career. They took me although I`m a grafic designer (I made a demo clip for the application)... and now I have the chance to became a good cutter. I hope i write a little bit more in this forum in future, because at the moment I work like an animal 9 to 15 hours a day. but it`s cool it was my choice. GREEZ TO MY FRIENDS OF MOVING PICTURES

[Eric Brown]

Good, idea this thread. Really like it and it puts us in touch with other professionals who can do things we can't and eventually may need for our own productions.
Moving on...I started in 92' doing miniature effects, modelmaking, set construction and conceptual art for feature films. Some low budget stuff like Ultraman, The Arrival. Shortly after, I started doing miniatures and set construction for bigger flicks. Titanic, Air Force One, Batman and Robin (All uncredited as this was through a 3rd party effects shop) Then I got into conceptual art almost exclusively and have screen credits for The first Power Rangers movie (yipee!) Alien Resurrection and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I think some of it is on IMDB? (gotta update) For the last several years I have been working as a designer in animation to try something new but am fully convinced my first love has always been movies, filmmaking and script writing. I'm working on a short now and employing all my skills to get this sucker done. A little too ambitious perhaps but not impossible. Being from the old school of film cameras I am still a relative newbie to DV and am trying to soak in all I can.
And there is a LOT to soak in. But quite honestly there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

[Kris Holodak]

I just realized that for all the times I've poked through this thread to see what people are up to, I've never actually responded myself.

These days I'm exclusively doing video for web sites at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I have a crew of part-timers for our daily webcast of the Millennium Stage performance, but for all the "feature" videos it's just me. I like that. I like getting to do everything from lighting and shooting to editing to encoding and compressing. I've done several hundred 3 minute mini-docs over the past few years. I don't really get to pick the stories that I'm telling in the way that an independent filmmaker has a story that they're passionate about and then goes out to tell it. On the other hand, I get a steady pay check for making video. I like the arts so I like the stories that I'm telling anyway. I've gotten to meet some really fascinating people. And I think I've been to more performances than anyone else who works in the administrative side of things here. I routinely tell people that I've got the best job in the building.

Smile,
Kris

[Daniel Broadway]

I'm the Graphics Director at WAFF 48 News in Huntsville, Alabama.