Three Of A Kind

The sport of People Watching has always been one of my favorites.

Meeting new people may be a close second.

I don’t always love the new people I meet, but I do love learning about other people’s lives.

As the great English poet Roderick David Stewart once said, Every Picture Tells A Story, Don’t It?

It sure do.

In my current workplace, a temporary job for two more weeks, I share an office with two gentlemen.

On the surface, we don’t have a whole lot in common.

One is a 24-year old single-man and one is a 52-year old married man.

They don’t have kids.   I have three.

In just a couple of weeks of getting to know him, the single man has shared many a detail about his single life.   He lives downtown, enjoys the nightlife and wonders where his career is going.

The married man, a former standup comedian, has been writing and producing television shows for much of his adult life.   He moved to our area, from Los Angeles, to try and improve his quality of life.

When it comes to ranking their priorities, work and career are definitely not at the top of the list.

Both guys, like me, are on freelance status.

Meaning, we don’t get medical insurance or any “benefits” AND as an extra bonus, they can get rid of us at any time.

In my case, I was signed for seven weeks, of which I have served five so far.

In their case, as long as there is work to be done, hopefully they have a place to spend their days.

Fortunately, we all get along VERY well.

We share a similar sense of humor.  

We all have a cloudy, cynical outlook on what the working world has become.

And at 5 O’clock, we go home.

The 52-year old man recently bought a new home in our area after moving here just a couple of months ago.

The fact that his wife is out of work and he could be the same at any moment doesn’t seem to bother him.

His credentials are very impressive with previous work in everything from sitcoms to music videos to cable series, so hopefully he’s got a nice stash under his mattress.

The other member of our office trio is just getting started.

He is still trying to battle his way out of college debt.

He earned his degree a couple of years ago and with it came a big pile of bills.

Now he’s working a couple of jobs, including one in his preferred field of a career (TV production) and one in his preferred field of making money (bartending).

Like any 24-year old single man living in a downtown bachelor pad, he still finds time to work in a social life.

Just two weeks ago, he informed us that if you are ever downtown AND you run out of cash AND you need to buy a hot dog from a street vendor in the middle of the night, there is one street vendor downtown who actually takes credit cards.

Last Saturday night he was headed to that vendor for a late night/early morning snack.

Unfortunately he never made it there.

While on his way, walking with a couple of friends, a “huge” man walked up to my friend and punched him in the face.

It must’ve been punched, as in plural, because when the attack was over, the damage was devastating.

Broken bones on his forehead, a broken nose, two swollen eyes and he had some teeth knocked out.

The injuries were so bad that when he got to the hospital after the attack, they had to airlift him to another hospital for more specialized treatment.

By all accounts, this was a completely random attack for no apparent reason and unfortunately the man who did this has not been caught.

According to the police, there has been a string of these going on downtown for the last few months.

There have been some arrests made, but clearly they didn’t get everyone.

My co-worker had some significant plastic surgery yesterday and fortunately he is doing well.

He expects to be back at work as early as next week, which is great news for us.

And great news for him as he looks to pay off some new debt.

Direct Hit

At approximately 1:54am local time last night/this morning, we were putting the final touches on a commercial I was producing.

For those of you who would like to work in TV, we started shooting at 3:00pm -- nearly eleven hours earlier.

We had our production meeting three hours before that.

The commercial is 30 seconds.

You do the math.

And that was just the shooting.  

The editing comes next, followed by the nitpicking.

But if you love the art, you need to love the trip to Home Depot to buy the paint.

I think it was... me, who just said that.

As the Producer, sometimes it is my role to drive the bus and make sure that everyone is on that bus with me.

Sometimes it is my job to just be a passenger and to make sure we are driving in the right direction.

In this case, there was no problem with the direction.

For this project, there was another freelance employee who jumped in behind the wheel and hit the accelerator.

He was the Director and Cameraman, Editor and Visionary.

One of the many former bosses that I worked for in my career always said there are two steps to success.

Have a plan.

And don’t suck.

Usually the second part is more important than the first, but without the plan, you’ve got big problems.

This was my first real venture with the Dir/Cam/Edit/Visionary guy, but I could tell right away he definitely had a plan.

And we really needed one.

The sponsor of the commercial flew in from across the country to oversee this shoot.

This was a such a big deal for our company that the employees got three different emails to make sure that they cleaned up their work area and dressed up for the visitors.

As for the commercial, we shot four scenes in three different locations.

After EVERY shot, the Director showed the sponsor what it looked like to make sure they approved, which they did.

There is no doubt they were impressed with the quality of the shoots and all of the thought that the Director had put into it.

It was a very long day for every one, but it was an especially long day for the guy who had been carrying the gear around, making sure that EVERY shot passed his high standards and more importantly adjusted to any and all input from the sponsor.

We started our final scene at around Midnight, about two hours later than we had hoped, but considering how well everything had gone, nobody was complaining.

His attention to detail was incredible, but his open-minded positive attitude was even better.

Until about 1:30am.

That’s when he got a little cranky -- nothing new in this business.

But when I say a little cranky, I mean a LITTLE cranky.

Unlike MANY temper tantrums I have witnessed first hand, this was more of a man who was getting frustrated that his perfect shoot was no longer going perfect.

... at 1:30 in the morning, 10+ hours after it started.

There was no screaming or yelling, but everyone could tell that this was not the same guy we had spent the day with.

Finally at 2:18am, we heard him belt out the three words we had all been waiting for.

THAT’S A WRAP.

As the new day had started, our long day had finally ended.

After the shoot was over, a handful of us, including the sponsor gathered around to talk about the commercial.

But it wasn’t the commercial that we ended up talking about.

Before we even got going, the Director apologized for getting cranky.

If that was cranky, there was no need to apologize.

Then he explained that about an hour earlier he had taken a late bathroom break and during that break, he checked his voice mail.

On his machine were two messages.

The first was from a 36-year old friend of his.

A friend who has been suffering through stomach cancer, going to chemo on a regular basis.

His friend said that she was really hoping that he could stop by as soon as possible.

He got another call 30 minutes later.

His friend had died.

As you might imagine, we were all in shock with this revelation.

This was the first we had heard of any of this. 

At no point did we have ANY idea that he was carrying around more on his back than just the video camera.