Saturday, September 1, 2012

The Front Row

As a Director and an AD on a soap and an AD on a sitcom, I sat in the front row of a television control room, alongside a technical director and a Production Assistant.  We talked over headsets to people in the studio and over our shoulders to Producers in the back row.  We watched a wall full of camera monitors and made choices every minute about what to say and which camera to use.  We were, as I used to say, "in the trench."

These days, I am quite often fielding questions like "what is your dream job?" or "what do you see yourself doing?" since both my resume and the range of jobs to which I've applied include directing, producing, ADing, stage managing, writing, and editing.  I find these questions hard to answer--there are many things I'd like to do (and thanks to the nature of soap production and a very open-minded producer, I got to do a lot of them over the years).  The easy answer, if anyone could really understand what it meant, would be "I want to be in the trench."  Whether it's with my hands on an editing console or talking to an editor about choices to tell a story better, working with actors to get the best performance or working with a production crew to figure out how to fit all the necessary equipment in a tight space, I want to be in the trench, on the front line being part of making the product better, whether it's for TV, web, or anywhere in between.  In the trench, close enough to my collaborators (as I was in the front row), to communicate almost without words and to know at the end of the day that something I said or did made a real difference in the work we created.

So in answer to those questions, put me in the trench.  Put me in the front row.  

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