Sunday, August 19, 2012

We're Back! - Part Two

"And my classes were awesome. I learned a great deal about writing and the film business in the short time that I was there..."

  I love that inscrutable dot, dot, dot; sitting there telling you that the story isn't finished and there's more left to be discovered; teasing you by holding back the things that are bound to come for who knows how long. It's so exciting, isn't it?

October 1st, 2011 - General Conference Weekend
  I had just moved out of Mike and Alexis' apartment and into a hotel to wait for our apartment to be made ready for us to move in. Jo and Ethan were still staying at my parents house in Arizona. I had been attending film school for almost a month at this point and I was really, really missing my family. I had limited use of my cell phone during the time and couldn't talk to Jo for very long at a time. We did some chatting on Facebook, but planning out times to chat was dicey since I had a 25 mile drive to and from school and the traffic was completely wretched and unpredictable. Depending on when my classes ended, the drive was anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Good ol' L.A.. Most times I didn't get home until around 11 P.M., so chatting wasn't a great option.
  So, being that I really missed my family and it was General Conference weekend, I decided I would drive over to Arizona early Saturday morning and back late Sunday night so I could spend as much time as possible with Jo and Ethan.

 While in Arizona, I received a call from Randy, a good friend from BYU-Idaho. Randy worked for a video production team that did videos for Intel, and he had a proposition for me. One of the main video teams used by Intel was getting over-paid for some low-quality work they had done on Intel training videos, and Randy was getting less and less tolerant of this situation.
  Randy and I had worked together on BYU-Idaho's student news program and he knew that there were several talented college graduates looking for video work that could give the Intel video team a run for their money. He proposed the idea of creating his own video team to his boss, promising higher-quality results with a lower price requirement. Randy's boss liked the idea and gave him the green light to start working on a proposal for the higher-ups of Intel.
  Randy explained this story to me and asked me if I wanted to be a part of the team. Needless to say, I was thrilled at the opportunity to get paid to create videos AND to be working on a video team full of friends. Randy said that this proposal was still in very early development stages and that I shouldn't expect anything to start happening for another year or so. I agreed to be patient, but jumped for joy after getting off the phone nonetheless. (I guess my reaction would be even better explained if I told you that I had been vainly trying to find a job in video for almost two years at that point.)

December 2011
  Randy promised to keep me updated on the project and by the time December rolled around, things had progressed at an alarmingly fast rate. At this point, we had the official proposal meeting planned for mid-January 2012 and were trying to create at least five impressive videos for the project. It was all very exciting, just busy. Alongside of working on the videos, I had to write a feature-length screenplay and a TV series episode for "Castle" among other bits of homework. Also, we had just found out that Jo was pregnant not too long beforehand, so lot's of prep was going into that as well.

January 2012
  My new semester started with a bang. The first week of school required us to make a short film. After that, we were required to write another feature film, revise it, write a TV episode of "Community", and create a pilot episode for an original TV series.
  During all of this, I was knee-deep in working on those videos for Intel. I was swamped with work! I really wanted to work hard in school because I love movies! I'm sure you all knew that. But I love video as well! I'd be happy getting paid to do either one. But the thing that was most influential for me was the fact that the project for Intel would likely lead to a paid career sooner than the film work. And the fact was, I was drowning at the moment in both endeavors and I really needed to decide which one I was going to focus on if I didn't want to fail on both sides.
  So after much prayer and discussion with Jo, I decided to defer my current school semester until the summer and devote my time fully to the Intel project.  Here are the videos we created:





February 2012
  So we turn these videos into Randy and he heads over to Portland for the big Intel presentation (I heard that there was a good sized audience present there) while we [im]patiently wait to hear how it goes. Randy calls us that night and says that the presentation went very well and that everyone was quite impressed with our work. He says that there will need to be some discussion over the next couple of months between all the big-wigs and he will keep us updated on what happens.

April 2012
  After two months of some intense waiting and hoping, Randy calls. From the tone of his voice, I can tell it's not the happiest news. He proceeds to tell me that the current video team is too integrated into other parts of Intel to be replaced at the time. He says that while we were very much the choice of the Intel heads, it was just impossible to try and have us replace the team, and not in the budget to hire us on alongside them. (SOUND EFFECTS of HOPES being CRUSHED)
  But then Randy's tone changed and he proceeded to tell me that while our video team may not be a possibility, there IS a chance that I may still get a job from this...

To be continued in "We're Back - Part Three"

3 comments:

  1. Ugh! We have to wait another week? Dang cliff hangers. Get us every time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Grrr. Ugh! Pfft. Seriously? You really do love this, don't you?

    ReplyDelete