Wed 5 Aug 2009
Make no bones about it. Weatherlight Productions is not a business and it’s never generated revenue of any kind. I’ve been gifted with roller derby swag, and a “client” once gave me a bottle of Parisian absinthe for my troubles, but I have never asked for payment of any kind, haven’t seen a dime from Google Ads, and I don’t even seek revenue. That might make it sound like Weatherlight Productions is just a hobby. Maybe.
In my experience, though, nothing you do is “just” a hobby. Well, maybe stamp collecting or something like that. Producing video, no matter how low-budget or guerrilla you do it, is never “just” a hobby, though, and that’s one reason I love doing it so much.
What am I talking about? Well, I’m glad you asked. A week ago, my boss’ boss, a person fairly well established in the pecking order of executives, asked about doing a demo of some software we want to make a product out of. When he discovered he couldn’t get it working, live, on a prototype, he came looking for someone to do a video of the software being demoed so it could be run full-screen on a prototype…to give his audience an idea of the experience. I answered the call. I actually had a Flip Mino HD, a gift from my wife on my 30th birthday, on me at the time. Within hours, I’d done a quick pilot shoot and worked out the encoding issues to run it on a prototype. The next day, I rigged a camera mount out of a dead laptop and a rubber band, and we were off to the races.
The video was a perfect fit. I not only got a pat on the back (literally…my boss’ boss slapped me on the back) for my efforts and public praise for the ingenuity of the camera mount, but I also was kept in mind for when another demo video was needed.
One was needed this week. This time, I got a ride home to grab my best camera, and an intern and I stayed a little late to get a completed demo of another project-to-be that was needed for a very important meeting with outside parties. This was very important to driving the project home in the eyes of people who could influence its fate. I stayed up pretty late that night editing, cleaning the video up, and balancing and warming the colors. The DVD burned while I slept. The next day, the execs looked at it and decided to run with it. It ran, silently, during the presentation, allowing the imagery of a live demo while a speaker presented the concepts behind it. I was, yet again, profusely thanked for my efforts by people well established in the executive order of my company, and I contributed to a successful presentation.
Some audience members even believed there must be trickery involved, because the demo video made features seem more mature than they had expected. I’ve been told there’s talk of doing more video work.
So, maybe I did finally get paid, because some of my paycheck this week was earned doing video at the company. The big point, though, is that I put two feathers in my cap in two weeks by being trained, equipped, and in the right place at the right time. I was ready to go because I’ve been training at doing this for three years in my spare time.
These days, you can never have too many skills, and you may be called upon to employ all of them at a moment’s notice. These days, nothing is “just” a hobby.
