A professor once told me that you're a nobody in the radio/television production world until you've been fired at least once. Based on that; I became the most important somebody to ever work in the field, all before I turned 25!
I have always been a geek; even in college. My senior project was to completely re-wire the television studio and master control at the university. I was in my element; pulling wires, soldering and crimping various audio and video connectors and timing the myriad of cameras, tape machines, CGs and other production equipment to ensure that the image would look just right. I know it sounds strange to the uninitiated that a severely color-blind production engineer would be put in charge of making sure the colors were correct and matched between all of the cameras; but it really is the perfect job for a color-blind geek! Who needs color vision when you have vectorscopes and waveform monitors. There was no need to see colors at all! In fact, I was consistently told that my camera setups were the best because I relied on my instruments and didn't use my eyes to tweak the settings.
Anyway, I moved to Wisconsin right after graduation (the next day, actually) and began freelancing as a grip/gaffer on video production shoots. I managed to hook up with a small company called VideoCraft in the Milwaukee area.
VideoCraft's full time workforce consisted primarily of just two people; Ralph - the Director/Cinematographer and Colleen - the Producer. I started out doing grunt work for their shoots and gradually moved up the ladder to doing more grunt work. That's pretty much the daily routine in the "glamorous" world of video production. The beautiful end result is quite detached from the reality of production.
Ralph and Colleen made a phenomenal production team. Ralph is a very talented director/cinematographer and Colleen could charm an Eskimo into believing they needed to buy ice. I soon became a regular on their productions.
One thing you must understand about talented directors/cinematographers is that they are extremely creative people. And one thing you must understand about extremely creative people is that they also tend to be extremely emotional.
Ralph was no exception.
A strange love/hate relationship is virtually guaranteed when a geeky engineer and a creative director work together a lot and also become friends. We both had a steadfast commitment to the quality of the end product. It had to be perfect in every way; the image, the sound, the visual impact and the technical specifications. An almost imperceptible background sound would disqualify a take just as certainly as a tiny imperfection in the image. The difference - to Ralph, it was high art; but to me, it was pure technology.
Fortunately; or perhaps unfortunately for those who worked with us, we were (are) both hard-headed, stubborn perfectionists. We may have "hated" each other by the end of a day, but the video was perfect; both artistically and technically.
The fire and water nature of our working relationship appeared rather early. Although I have long ago forgotten what caused Ralph to fire me the first time, I still remember the eruption of being fired. I didn't realize, yet, that getting fired was a temporary thing.
In my mind, getting fired meant you were finished. You don't work there anymore. That's not too hard to understand; even in a freelancing situation. So I did what any person who got fired does - I stayed home the next day.
Now Ralph very well may have intended my firing to be permanent, but I think Colleen recognized the value of our partnership and decided that she was going to un-fire me. She also knew Ralph and knew that he would calm down and forget why he fired me in the first place.
No, Colleen wouldn't let me stay fired! She called the next day wondering where I was. Well, duh! I was at home, of course because I had been fired from the shoot. I was immediately informed that I'd better get back on set ASAP because they were waiting on me. Apparently, Ralph had somehow forgotten that he had fired me, but was ready to fire me in the morning when I was late for his crew call.
Ah, the joys of working with an extremely creative person!
Ralph and Colleen and I worked together for years. I quickly lost count of how many times Ralph fired me. The routine was always the same after that first time; he would fire me and I would just keep on working. It became a pattern; fired, ignored, fired, ignored and on and on.
Our career paths diverged and reconnected several times through the years until we both ended up moving in a bit different directions. We still keep in touch periodically; but much less than I know we should. In the long run, though, I suppose Ralph and I both got what we deserved. He and Colleen later fell in love, got married and have a daughter who will graduate next year with an engineering degree from Purdue. I'm sure she lives out all of those analytical tendencies that must drive Ralph nuts sometimes. And I married Diane and have a son with a music degree; who is perhaps the ultimate in the spontaneous, creative personality and all that goes with it. And, yes, he drives me nuts sometimes.
I haven't been fired in quite a while now. Maybe I should just hang around with Ralph again to remember what it's like.
No comments:
Post a Comment