Blogocentric Formulations

New Year, New Job

Today marked the beginning of the second week at my new job. It's been a hectic, crazy week and I'm just now starting to understand the sheer scope of the job I signed on for. I know I don't talk a lot about my day job on WdC, and that's partially for some semblance of anonymity, and partially because working in the entertainment industry tends to bring out a lot of people who see connections to a well-known movie and television company as a means of getting their own foot in the door. ("Oh, you work for [SUCCESSFUL COMPANY]? That's amazing! I've got an idea for a movie I think would be perfect for them..." )

Without going into too many specifics, there are a couple of things I need to mention about my new job:

First, I'm working for a company whose projects I love. I've literally seen every single one of their movies in the theater, and every episode of all but two of their television series. I've been a fan of this company's intellectual properties since I was a little kid, and I'm totally geeking out over the fact that I play a small role in seeing that IP brought to the screen. My last job made well-known movies and television, but it's not the stuff I would choose to watch on my own, if I weren't trying to support my employer. This is a case where I was a fan of my new company's projects long before I started working there, and will continue to watch them long after I'm gone.

Second, I've been trying to get a job at this company for over a decade. For whatever reason, the timing hasn't been right. I've applied for jobs I knew I'd be perfect for and not even been called in for an interview. I've gone in for interviews and had them lead nowhere. To be fair, it's a popular company that gets hundreds of applications for every job, so competition has been fierce. I had to take a significant pay and title cut to get the job, but I did it gladly. Suffice to say, I've really wanted to work here for a really long time, and now it's a reality.

Third, the job is on a studio lot, which has always been a dream of mine. At lunch I can walk to the commissary and pass sound stages where they're building movie sets, and iconic buildings that feature architecture and artwork that highlight film and industry history dating back more than fifty years. God must have had this really well planned out, because the company I work for just moved to the studio lot a few years ago, after several years of bouncing around to other locations around Los Angeles.

Fourth, this new job is very specific and directly related to getting a movie ready for release into theaters. All of my previous jobs have involved a wide variety of responsibilities relating to the business of making movies (not all of them movie specific). The job I just left after five years, for example, had me doing everything from tracking payments and deadlines to managing company relations to implementing document control processes. I was very much a generalist that put out whatever fire was burning on the corporate frontline that day. Now, I'm the one specifically responsible for the movie's screen credits (making sure all those names at the beginning and end of a movie are correct) and promotional items (making sure the movie posters, merchandise, and advertising all attribute credit and legal notices properly)... and that's it. All day every day is doing that specific job - which is considerable based on the size of the movies we release - and it means that I can sit in a theater on opening weekend and point to a part of the movie and say, "I was the one who did that part of what you're watching" rather than, "I work for the company that made this movie." It's a weird feeling to be so specifically involved in these productions.

Fifth and lastly, I can already tell this job isn't going to give me a lot of downtime. At each of my past jobs, there's been ample time to distract myself with other things (like WdC!) during the day. Things at those companies would move slower and, for someone like me who is pretty efficient at his job, there were lots of times where I had time to kill because everything on my to-do list was done and I was waiting on input from other people to do the next thing. This job isn't going to be like that. I had over 50 emails on my first day, and it's only gone up from there. I'm busy from the minute I get to work to the minute I leave, and I haven't so much as logged into my Gmail, checked WdC, scrolled through my Facebook feed, or even surfed the web since I've started. It's probably better that way (work should be a time of work, not recreation), but it's definitely a transition from what I'm used to.

While I was typing all that, I completely forgot my reason for writing this blog post.

I suppose the point of all this is just to say that I'm ridiculously excited about my new job, but I'm also feeling a little out of sorts and overwhelmed. I'm sure that will change as I settle in and start to get familiar with the way the company runs, but it's an odd feeling to be at a place I've wanted to be for a long time, doing a type of job that's relatively new to me.

2016 is starting off as a year of many changes, and - after the last five years of pretty steady consistency - it's exciting to see what's in store during this new season!