Moving on...? (A love letter or a Dear John to a 20 year career)
Moving on from an industry we’ve spent a couple of decades working within is complicated.
It provokes questions around identity, self-esteem, aging, limitations (external and internal), self-belief, self-trust and even the value of our time on this earth.
I got to know Al when we spoke for the first time on one of my Light at the end of the Tunnel calls. She, like all the other members of the Midlife Unstuck community, is on the path to designing her future work in a way that feels really enjoyable and sustainable.
She articulated the complications underlying her thoughts on career change so beautifully, I asked if she would write an article for our community to help others begin to unpick their complex relationship with their work. Here’s what she wrote.
Lucia
It’s the classic meet-a-stranger question: “So what do you do?”
When I reply, “Me? I’m a designer in the film industry,’ it often produces an, “Ooh that sounds interesting,” response.
I nod and smile adding the caveat, “Well...it has its moments.”
Filming sees me surviving on a few hours sleep a night for weeks on end.
When they look puzzled - I mean, how can filming possibly be anything other than exciting, glamorous, fun? - I fill them in on the industry’s unfeasibly long hours. Working a thirty-six hour day is not unheard of. Filming sees me surviving on a few hours sleep a night for weeks on end. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been stranded in car park at midnight stuffing...no...ramming bags of props and costumes into the already full boot of my car before my 4am alarm call the next morning.
Understandably, my new acquaintance slings me a ‘yeah-whatever’ look, as they gloss over my moans about unsociable hours. And this is before I even get started on the rampant job insecurity. They head straight for their next question. Nine times out of ten it’ll be, “Have you worked with anyone famous?” And the answer to that is yes. Yes, I have. But I’ll return to that further down the page. (It’s towards the end if you’re eager to fast forward.)
When I started in the film business I was much younger.
Twenty-plus years younger.
Seasoned film professionals say it takes a decade to really know your own specific job. And it’s true.
For those first ten years film crew live in constant fear of being found out. Working in film is like learning a strange new language. There are the ECU’s. That’s a shot where the subject is filmed in Extreme Close Up. There are also MCU’s (Medium Close-Ups), VLS’s (Very Long Shots). There are plenty more - but you get the idea.
The assistant director really does bellow, “It’s a wrap!” when filming is over for the day.
In this brave new world you discover a ‘dolly’ bears no relation to either Barbie or Ken. It’s a wheeled platform designed to move the camera around smoothly. There’s a guy - and it’s almost always a guy - whose sole job is to manoeuvre the dolly around on a track. He’s known as the grip. Grips, like all film crew, have to know their stuff.
The storyboard is the linchpin of a shoot. It’s a guide which plots out each frame of the story in comic book form. All crew, from the hairdresser to the special effects supervisor, have to decipher scripts and deconstruct storyboards into a practical, workable plan. There are more than a hundred specialist jobs on a film set. The more self-explanatory ones range from set designers and film editors to wig specialists. Picking at random from the others there are location managers, animal handlers, make-up designers, cinematographers, script supervisors, production managers, focus pullers - way too many to list. Each one is super talented and honed in their specialism. Some jobs and their corresponding skill set exist solely in the film world - like the grip.
Next time you visit the cinema, linger for a few minutes just before the lights come up. Stay and watch the credits roll. You’ll find most of us there.
Over the years I’ve dressed god and his entourage (angels, the clergy) as well as the devil and his henchmen (vampires and zombies).
I’m a designer.
My piece in this jigsaw of film professionals is to tell the tale using clothes as the tool.
It’s my job to interpret the story and the corresponding period, history, context and character. Some of that is instinctive and visceral, but if there are gaps in my knowledge I’ll jump to it, conducting my research and compiling my reference material. Ask me, say, about the 42 Laws of cricket, with it’s innings, wicket-keepers, batters and bowlers and I will freely admit to being stumped. If instead, I’m hired to sort my cricket whites from my umpire’s coats, I’ll pull together a faultlessly kitted-out cricket eleven in plenty of time for tea, long before the cameras roll.
Over the years I’ve dressed god and his entourage (angels, the clergy) as well as the devil and his henchmen (vampires and zombies).
I even designed an outfit for the grim reaper him/herself.
One day I might style an elegant ballet dancer or an international sports star. The next I could be gently coaxing a reluctant five-year old to step into the back-end of the little donkey in a fake filmed nativity play.
I have networks of artisans, makers, tailors, costume hire companies and an A-Z address book of sources on speed dial.
It means I can source any item of clothing whether it’s luxury high fashion, cool gear from the sixties, a formula 1 driver, a queen, a pope or a tramp. One year there was a fad for streakers - not much scope there for costume you’d think. By the time I’d sewn my third streaker in four months into a flesh coloured man-thong I was beginning to wonder if there was - please film gods - a more conventional, less buttock-proximate way of earning a living.
One day I might style an elegant ballet dancer or an international sports star. The next I could be gently coaxing a reluctant five-year old to step into the back-end of the little donkey in a fake filmed nativity play.
On any film shoot there are levels of stress and panic that could be termed ‘acute’.
This happens because there are a lot of expensive professionals in one place attempting to complete a mammoth task within a strict timeframe. These ‘acute’ episodes are visited on every crew member at points in the shoot as a matter of course. When your the one in the firing line it’s no joke.
Back in the early days, I had to design a futuristic robot.
There was a catch. It was supposed to look like a solid metal robot - think Terminator Lite. Yet, it had to be soft and flexible enough for the stunt guy inside to sprint through a dense forest and perform multiple backflips. For reasons long forgotten (almost certainly time and budget constraints), against all my professional advice, we couldn’t fit it on the stuntman until we were bang on set minutes away from shooting. This is the worst possible scenario for a designer. We were miles from civilisation, filming deep in the middle of nowhere in a remote, thick forest.
My team and I tried the costume on him in the wardrobe truck for the first time. As we were struggling to pull it up over his shoulders, it split all the way up the back middle seam.
The stuntman had given us his measurements from...hmm...maybe ten years previous, when he had been altogether a slimmer, narrower stuntman. I had an impatient director, a jittery producer, uptight clients, highly-strung ad agency and upwards of seventy film crew on my case.
It was time to improvise.
I rifled through my work kit and found a few packets of metal scouring pads - goodness knows why, but there they were. We uncoiled the metal pads and fixed them all the way up the back seam to make it look as if it was the robot’s innards spilling out. It took several tense, hurried minutes. But now it fitted and it worked. The director thumbs-upped his seal of approval. A potential disaster and a time-is-money delay had been averted.
Cut to: relieved wiping of foreheads and a stuntman robot performing backflip after backflip in the forest all day long.
Contrary to the impression I may be making with my robot tale, the hands-on creative element of my job can be relatively small.
Much of my time is spread between the ‘hunting and gathering’ phase, presentations - digital and live, the many layers of logistics, teams to be managed and collaboration with other departments to be co-ordinated. There are budgets to be balanced, deals to be negotiated, reams of paperwork to be dealt with and hundreds of emails to be skim-read.
So far, so like any other middle management-type job.
Sports stars, supermodels, actors have to be handled with charm, tact and diplomacy, as do their legion of agents, minders and managers.
The demands of directors are visionary and creative.
The requirements of producers are practical and monetary.
These opposing needs have to be reconciled at every turn. Sports stars, supermodels, actors - the people who wear the clothes - also have their own separate agendas and demands. These expectations have to be handled with charm, tact and diplomacy, as do their legion of agents, minders and managers.
Only the army runs a hierarchy as rigid as the pecking order on a film set.
It means politics play out at every turn.
This might involve gently schooling an intern on set etiquette, designed to prevent him or her suffering a dressing down if they pester a star for a selfie during a working day. It could call for a word in the ear of a green young runner; it seems only fair to warn them they may not be asked back if they bug a busy director with a barrage of daft questions. If you’re filming an advert it’s sensible be aware, bad as their decisions can be, corporate clients are always right, just like the customer in an upscale department store in the 1950’s.
Tough and complex as it is sometimes, clearly filming is not brain surgery, rocket science, or Doctors Without Borders.
I blame the gravitational pull towards this work squarely on the youthful urge towards glamour and excitement. Let’s call it biology. Predictably, the glamour quotient over the years turned out to be nigh on zero. I wanted to party and I had to work. Way back then I figured that filming might just magically combine the two.
In those early days, due to the sheer intensity at the heart of filming, it was like being on the fringes of a strange all-hours party, albeit one that was populated with madmen and mavericks.
And to drag out that ropey party analogy now that I’m twenty-plus years in? Well, here’s how it looks: after a long manic all-nighter dawn is filtering in through the curtain cracks. Dregs slosh at the bottom of beer bottles and fag ends float in the half-empty wine glasses. Some semi-coherent stragglers are still chewing the face off each other. I have no idea how to find a cab; I’m totally stuck. The young ones are just arriving and they insist on playing annoying music that I have no idea how to dance to.
So...yes...it may well be time to move on.
It’s seems prudent to start polishing and buffing latent abilities and talents, to find a way to earn a living more in tune with my rhythm, energy and interests as they are now, as opposed to twenty five years ago. What it boils down to is this: time marches on and people change.
Viewing it through the rear window, I can see it’s been a heck of a ride.
Maybe that’s why it’s not proving to be a picnic pursuing an alternative route.
It’s been a heck of a ride. Without doubt there were eons of dull and boring bits. But it’s also been chock-full of fun and incident and wonderful, colourful people.
Sure, there have been the endless rollercoaster rides of stress and back-breaking pressure. There are the recurring privations brought on by this feast-and-famine mode of earning a living.
Without doubt there were eons of dull and boring bits. But it’s also been chock-full of fun and incident and wonderful, colourful people.
There was the actress who insisted I take a closer look at her intimate piercing in the costume truck. And, yes, I politely declined. Often in my thoughts is a colleague in Prague who told me hair- raising stories about her parents survival after the Soviet tanks rolled into the city in 1966. Once, while filming a charity ad, a jaded film crew was humbled by the MacMillan nurse who loved her job to bits even although her little daughter had just been admitted to a MacMillan centre suffering from cancer herself.
There have been so many characters and so many tales - more than enough to fill a thousand and one nights. I’ve barely started on the clever crew, the dedicated producers, and the switched-on directors. I don’t mean all of them. Oh no. As in any job or industry there have been twits, gits, frauds and duds a-plenty. Thankfully though, the majority of my colleagues have been talented, funny, hard-working and resourceful. It’s been a joy to queue up alongside them at the catering truck in the line for lunch.
It remains a fact in the UK that 53% of people would like to switch jobs and 79% of employees don’t feel valued at work.
Reading this over, I’m finding it difficult to decide whether I’ve written a Dear John letter or if it reads more like a twisted love poem to this job of mine.
Sure, I understand hankering to change course is high up there on the list of privileged first-world problems.
Yet it remains a fact in the UK that 53% of people would like to switch jobs and 79% of employees don’t feel valued at work.
If it’s true we only get one life - and as far as we know it is - don’t we owe it to ourselves to get the most we can from the place we spend the majority of our time if we are one of the 99.9% of humans who have to earn a living?
As promised earlier, back to the famous people.
It’s the angle of my job that seems to most fascinate strangers. Except, I’ve signed way too many NDA’s (non-disclosure agreements) and I’m way too professional to spill a single solitary bean. Annoying, I know.
What I will say is, as gifted and talented as famous people can be, they’re also all too human.
Sure, there’s the hoopla, the circus, the sprinkling of stardust surrounding them. The actual person standing inside that circus ring is, I can report back, much like the rest of us. It’s prudent to be aware they’re not going to become your best friend or guest at your wedding anytime soon. Fortunately, my own friends and family have consistently surpassed any quotas I might have set for being interesting, funny and lovable.
And in real life - at weddings and as best friends - it’s wise to remember that funny, interesting and lovable will outdo a puff of stardust every time.
