"But You've Only Done..."

Over the last few years, I have joked many times about the difficulty of moving from one genre of TV to another. It's often as if potential employers are saying "You've only ever done 22 minute shows, and here we do 23 minute shows. How could you possibly understand what we do?"

Clearly, this is an exaggeration, but while no one has actually said those exact words, the attitude is out there, making it hard to transition between genres. There have, I'll admit, been moments when I realized that certain production models really wouldn't match up with my skill set. But there have also been many times when I could see the same patterns across multiple genres--where clearly, "someone used to 22 minute shows" could perfectly well deal with "23 minute ones." And my recent weekly travels between news editing and sitcom audience switching (how much more different could those genres be?) have provided some great examples of that...

Does making sure the news stories are edited in time for the broadcast really require so different a skill set than making sure cameras have their shots in time for the action of the scene?

Does making sure you have the pieces you need to edit the story properly really require so different a skill set than communicating constantly with audio, video, and post to make sure you have the pieces for the shooting of a show?

Does looking for ways to generate edited news clips faster really require so different a skill set than looking for ways to make studio production more efficient?

Does choosing the most compelling shots to show assorted world chaos really require so different a skill set than choosing the shot that will best show the the star's entrance, the stunt, or the joke?

There have been times when I have realized that perhaps I can't make every possible leap between productions, but thanks to some lucky opportunities, I have also realized first-hand that the so-called "23 minute shows" have a a lot more in common than their "22 minute" counterparts than one might think. The bridges in between are there. Perhaps someday, it won't be only the lucky opportunity that allows us to cross them.