This is why I’m always cranky:
Yesterday, I was up for 21-hours straight shooting for next week’s Fashion Festival. We shot videos for eight brands (which included Bayo, Folded & Hung, and Cinderella, among others) … a positively ridiculous task for a single day of work. And of course, when that was over and done with, the real work (that of creating graphics and animations for the presentation) begins.
It always amazes me how this job brings together people from all levels of the socio-economic strata. You don’t get this sort of heterogeneity in investment banking. At the very top of course, you have the producers and the talents, who have annual incomes in the 7-digit range, who go to events because they need to be visible, and go clubbing because they genuinely find it fun. Below that (separated by about a million pesos), you have the creatives (i.e., us), who check out events because they know some of the people participating, and go clubbing once a year in an futile effort to be cool. And of course, below that, you have the crew, who do their jobs for purely economic reasons, and don’t give a shit about being visible or being cool.
It can be especially interesting when you’re part of the creatives, because you have to interface with both the talents, the crew and the people paying for everything (i.e., the Enemy). One exchange from yesterday, in particular, comes to mind:
It was about 130pm, and the crew had already finished eating lunch. (The food for the creatives and the crew always come in these small styrofore containers; sometimes it really sucks, but mostly you’re too hungry to care.) The models haven’t eaten yet, and I’m worried that the standard-issue plastic fork & spoon might be “beneath” them.
So I go up to them, and ask them what they’d like to eat — if the packed lunches were ok with them, or if they’d like to eat outside. They look at me blankly, like they can’t understand why I would even be offering the crew-type food to them. Finally, our girl model says, “What kind of food is it?”
Of course I don’t know, coz I haven’t seen it yet, so I shout to the crew (who are lazing around waiting for their lunches to be digested), “Ano ba yung pagkain kanina? (What was the food earlier?)”
The crew kinda scratches their collective heads, mumbling their replies, which basically boils down to “chicken something”.
I try again, “Okey naman sya di ba? (It was ok wasn’t it)”
A long silence ensues, and I look helplessly from the crew back to the models.
Scratching my head, I say, “Ok, I guess that means you’re eating out …”
Everyone laughs heartily, and the models end up spending a sizable chunk of the production budget at Friday’s.
===
I like stories like that, and it’s one of the reasons I still do videos. I like how working like this allows you to have these brief, encapsulated relationships with people that you ordinarily wouldn’t be around, and I like how it teaches me to get along with all kinds of folks.
Relating to rich, beautiful people who sincerely think they’re better than me is still a bit tricky, but I think I’ve at least gotten the hang of talking to the crew. I suppose it’s weird that I have to “learn” to do this, but at least there’s personal growth in there, somewhere.
I’m a real softie when it comes to second chances, and this new clamshell from Nokia looks like it just might win me over. After their laughable attempt at a high-fashion clamshell, I can honestly say I began to have doubts about the Finns’ sanity. But this new functional model looks to rectify that situation considerably.