Chronologically, the work I have done started with-
Paperboy– several years during my junior high era
Toy store clerk– Christmas during high school
Credit jeweler stock clerk– Al Davis, then owner of the Oakland Raiders, who had been an assistant coach for the San Diego Chargers, and a friend of my fathers (he was the Sports Editor of the evening paper in San Diego then) had a minority partner who owned the store. It’s how I got this job in downtown Oakland during my Berkeley years
Honey packaging – family business in Piedmont, also during my Berkeley years, on Piedmont Ave right below the cemetery. Great take home benefits.
Bell Hop, Hotel del Coronado– Another family friend was the manager of the Hotel del, as people called it. This was my summer job while at Berkeley. I wore a short haired wig, while they took my photo id without it. While the job is about taking people’s bags to their room, it is a front line hospitality relationship, where learning what people came for, and helping them get that, made all the difference in how much money, and fun, I would have at the end of the day.
Incoming Student counselor– my first institutional job at USC. Led to many great unexpected benefits. This included living all summer in the dorms doing incoming freshman events in three day chunks. I learned that doing a job well could be exhausting.
Teaching Assistant– a condition of a scholarship I won at USC for a short film I had done. This led to my first real mentor in Woody Omens.
Production Assistant– gopher work in the extreme. Started on a TV movie, and was kept on for commercials etc. My entre into Hollywood proper.
Commercial Assistant Editor– this was the bottom rung of a four person enterprise where the receptionist was also the accountant/bookkeeper and that meant I did all the running as well as all the assistant work for a flat rate of $25 a day, which often were 14 hours long. I reached an impasse when I shared with the business partner that state law required I be paid overtime. He offered me the opportunity to stay late and cut spots (uncompensated) instead.
Film Librarian– I got hired out of my indentured servitude by the first person to get a contract with the then new company Home Box Office to produce original programming. It was to be a ‘clip’ show and the producer needed someone to organize and supervise the also new process of transferring his garage full of film clips to videotape.
Editor/Associate Producer– the librarian job morphed into this when the hired firm’s editor walked out on my boss because he had no script and was always just putting two things together to see what narrative they suggested. Learned first generation telecine process, and first generation video tape editing with all sorts of technical challenges and secrets.
I also got to be in meetings with the two founding executives of HBO- Micheal and Iris. I got a first hand experience of how people who control distribution think and operate. Given what HBO has become, and what it meant to the evolution of cable, and thus the industry, I was naively present at a junction of technological and business model disruption from which the balance of my career has benefited.
Post production consultant– My first entrepreneurial endeavor- Gunpoint Production (name was based on my mentor of the times, Woody Omens, who said that the best work is done “when you are under the gun” which also played off my experience looking down the barrel of a gun) I would take people’s offline record tape with burn in numbers and create clean edit decision lists for online assembly of a master. At the time, an online room cost about $300 a hour, so having a clean list could make a huge difference. To convince producers, I would offer to produce the list for $40 an hour, or 25% of what I could save off their vendor’s estimate for the online. If I saved someone $3000, we both made out. The best part of this was that I would do this at home using a 3/4″ deck, a Commodore 64 computer, and hand enter all the numbers in ASCII which taught me punctuation way better than my 8th grade English teacher ever did.
I also learned that one could make good money, do a great service and wear whatever or nothing to work.
Freelance off/online editor-My list skills and understanding of story telling led to my getting assignments yankng the joysticks on Convergence editing equipment in a variety of places, including some full service shops. I was among the first to rotate in at Varitel’s Studio City location, where the new form of television magazine shows got segments finished.
This sort of assignment, where you would meet the client, the material and knock it out in a couple of hours taught me the skill of making quick connections with the people I needed to communicate with to produce results under deadlines that were far more intense than my previous work.
Long form editor-As with anyone working in the Hollywood market, feature films have always been a beckoning mountain to climb, and when I had the opportunity, I joined in. I was fortunate to work with remarkable directors such as Bigas Luna, Gilbert Moses and Guy Magar. Look them up. They each trusted me with their projects. I worked in film, with splicers, tape based non linear as well as the first generation of true digital 24 frame editing.
Editor/vendor-My entrepreneurial experience combined with my editorial history and skills in a venture which created an early black box services company. Partnered with a sales person/producer, who managed the books, and the external process, I edited the content and managed the director and we produced hour long television dramas using tape post techniques delivering in fewer weeks, and included the release print as well. The savings in time combined with delivering both the finished master in tape and film brought us steady clients as well as put us in position to be early adopters of the non linear editing equipment that was just starting to appear.
Sales engineer/Manager of Training– The promise of non linear technology was apparent in the early concepts, but the question of which technology to use was impacted by a number of considerations in a complex interplay of costs of the various methods technology companies used to achieve it. Early variants used multiple copies of dailies on tapes or video discs to create a live cut in real time. Whether it was the multiple decks, or discs, all of the early technologies used 30 frame video which made editing film masters dicey. The financing my partner and I had lined up got bored waiting for the double headed disc players we had been told would make the need for multiple copies of videodiscs unnecessary, and found something else to do. That partnership dissolved and I found myself with the challenge and opportunity to be the lead person for an effort that came out of Chicago from the BHP company, which was spun off from Bell & Howell Professional. The company was based on its established film printers which had suddenly become critical to the then new idea of mass release of feature films. As part of the breakup of B&H, they had taken on a non linear project that was unique in its use of touch screen controls, and vertical interval time code on VHS tapes. The competition was Editflex, which used a light pen and linear time code on VHS, and whose point person, Herb Dow was a well established good old boy in the television market. This assignment led to a real world education in sales, organization, training (as I got to learn from many editing masters while I taught them the tool)as well as introduced me to leadership in Hollywood post production. My tenure ended when I exhibited disappointment with management when they failed to deliver more equipment after I had sold 110% of capacity for a year. This dovetailed nicely with our contract with Intel to develop the first AVI editor, or true digital non linear editing on a PC. My role in this project brought me into contact with a group of Intel retirees who gave me the conceptual understanding of markets and business models which informed my most productive and dynamic part of my post production life.
Non linear Editing consultant– The insights I received from the Intel alumni included seeing that hardware and software were poor values compared to training. So I focused myself on being in a position to teach editors, post production managers, directors and producers how to adapt to the emerging tools. This turned out to take a while, and I went from leading a company to being the film assistant for editing legend John Martinelli. The projects would be on film or non linear, and always involved great people and good food. My time with John provided immense lessons in storytelling, and even greater ones in how to be in the room, manage from below, and have everyone like you. John deserves his legend status.
Eventually the marketplace for digital equipment matured to include feature films, and I found myself in the position I had prepared for- doing high level problem solving for producers who had chosen Lightworks for their first digital non linear film editing experience.
Vendor- The consulting work started being a problem solver for the manufacturer, who sold the gear, and would integrate systems, but was poorly positioned and budgeted to teach and support the projects that their products would be placed upon. As things unfolded, I found myself in a conversation with Peter Boyle, who was just two weeks into the film “Waterworld”. The project was in the trades daily as a disaster, and speculation was high that Universal would pull the plug on it. Boyle astutely predicted the political games that were to come and surmised that using a digital editing system would keep him from being a pawn or victim in said games. He asked me to become his assistant editor and convert the show to a Lightworks system in mid stream. I asked how long he had been with his current first assistant, and pointed out how no matter how much we might like each other, this individual and I would come to resent the fact that I would be his primary interaction, and the other would have the salary and title. He asked what I thought would work. I said ask if his first is willing to learn the digital stuff, and then I would work to convert the show, teach his crew, and be a consultant that would come and go as they needed to learn each step. And this is what happened. About six weeks into this arrangement, the first was managing the daily work very nicely. I was camped out on a couch in the editing suite, which was a set of converted hotel rooms overlooking the Kona coast, reading Hawaiian history books, when one of the Gordon brothers producing the film came into the room, looked at me, and then out the windows and said in a loud voice “Why am I paying this guy to sit here?” Boyle, out of sight, but not earshot, replied “Because without him we don’t know what we are doing”. “Not my fault you don’t know how to do your jobs” Gordon fired back. Boyle, not missing a beat “If we ever had anytime to learn something, maybe we would”. It went on. It was obviously not the first time the subject had been discussed. I was clear that the value of my intellectual property, of my training role, was not appreciated by the producer, who had a substantial stake in his.
A couple of days later, I stopped by Gordon’s office and asked an innocuous question about my per diem of the Production Coordinator and stuck my head in Gordon’s office to see if he was in. Without looking up he gruffly asked “what do you want?” I stepped inside. “What are you ok with paying for?” He looked up, thought a moment, and said “The boxes. I have a budget for the boxes. Gotta have them.” I called my wife that evening and told her of my plan to borrow whatever it took to buy as many boxes as possible. The model for changing the industry was in rentals. I founded Electric Picture Solutions with a partner and became a key part of the accelerating transition to use digital nonlinear equipment in feature films. Over the next five years, my company often had half the top ten grossing films in release as our clients. I generated a number of innovations in how the process could be optimized in what is now commonly called workflow, but then was a maze of untested and often surprisingly easy to mess up steps. I invented a new kind of film leader which while really useful, couldn’t justify its’ cost, much less profit.
The growth forced me to learn new skills as a manager, trainer, salesperson, and student. And as our clients were multiple productions, my exposure to creative business and film making issues skyrocketed. I learned creative and relationship problem solving from the very best editors, directors and producers; far more than I could have if I had stayed in the editing room on a series of shows.
Board member IATSE 700- When the rental business exploded, I found myself navigating the difficult role of being the person who embodied change in the workplace. More than once, a producer would hire me to transition a post production team to new tools and processes, often without consulting their team. I would literally walk into a room of hostile editorial workers who were sure they would not be able to adapt, or that this was a strategy to push them out. I learned a great deal from these situations and people about learning, teaching, and labor relations. As I was still working on projects in a contract role as an assistant on some projects, I became aware of the opportunity to influence this situation from the organized labor angle. I ran for and was elected to the Board of Directors three times, serving on negotiating committees, strategy, education, outreach and served as chair of a group that created a new organizational and operational structure for the Guild, which then doubled in size thanks to merging and growth.
The Guild successfully anticipated attacks on the roles and job classifications, as well as eliminated the word “film” from the contracts years in advance of it’s elimination from production, and preserved terms and conditions as well as the creative roles and relationships that have been the core value of editors since the beginning of the industry. This has been one of the most satisfying aspects of being a part of a disruptive technological change- having the careers, pensions and salaries of thousands of effected people be improved for the change. I am pleased to have one of the few personal letters of recommendation for a Board member long time 700 Executive Director Ron Kutak has signed.
Producer-As the industry and my family matured, I choose to shift my life in a way that would allow me to be around my family more. I adapted by shifting my skills to production of industrial and documentary films. Producing gave me much more control of my time and location. I got to wake up in the same place as my wife and children way more days of the week/month/year. My quality of life and challenge went up too.
As I developed a clientele, I found myself repeatedly in conversations with people who wanted a video to promote their cause, product or company, but were not prepared for a variety of reasons.
I continue to take projects, and have several properties which I seek to develop. Producing is immensely satisfying, challenging and fun.
Business consultant- I had many relationships with technology companies as part of my life as a vendor, first as a sales person, in that I was always selling technology changes to Hollywood as a group and producers in particular, and then as a customer, as my life as a vendor put me in position to back up my telling them what I wanted to buy with actually buying and then succeeding with their product in the marketplace. As I transitioned from being a vendor, I did a number of research and reporting projects for technology companies, as well as sales work for some. Hollywood seems like a foreign country to many people in the technology world, and I served as something of a guide, translator and scout. My research on the initial use of digital cameras in television production revealed that the savings in lab costs were being eaten by the doubling of material having to be processed in post, as directors realized they could shoot way more by never saying ‘cut’ and still look efficient on the production reports. Another project attempted to quantify the value in the salt mines (literally) of copyrighted materials held by the studios yet not cataloged much less put into the marketplace. The cultural reasons for this were part of another study.
These projects, combined with my interactions with producing clients led to my taking on business consulting where I helped people solve problems related to their own skill and education development. People often outgrow themselves when they succeed, as I had done in post production.
Yogi/RFST trainer- At one point not too many years back, my mother, sister, wife and daughter all had critical diagnosis at the same time. My professional life was on hold as I juggled the support of each and all. Within these demands, I struggled to find a way to take care of the caregiver. An old friend pointed me to a method which had just arrived in my town, and I was immediately struck by the new experience of my body. In my first training, I got scar tissue from a long forgotten shoulder injury broken open. This compelled me to dedicate six hours a week to actively pursuing the technique. During the fourth week, I had a series of assisted movements that cleared a pattern in my back which had been the cause of significant (can’t get up or move around)back spasms that I had been dealing with three to five times a year for almost a decade. As each level of my exploration unfolded, I arrived at a point where it was clear that my development would be served by practicing this as a trainer, working with and teaching others. Thus today, as part of my much more balanced and healthy life, I work as an Elite Trainer using the Resistance Flexibility Strength Training methods developed by Bob Cooley, who is the source for much of the eccentric movement modalities available.
What else?- I doubt that my list of roles in life is complete. I remain involved in motion picture production, especially of the type and style that doesn’t demand that those participating make themselves ill in the process. I am always looking to indulge my motorhead sensibilities in profitable projects, and when the occasion seems appropriate, I expect to enjoy developing property of all kinds.