Yesterday I had an interview for a production role with a tech company that I’ve been courting for almost two years. Our first meeting was deep into the pandemic and I was either incredibly unhappy and probably insecure at the job I had at the time or perhaps I was even furloughed during that stretch when all of the companies freaked out in late March of 2020 and laid off large swaths of their staff, thinking the economic downturn would be quick and brutal. Brutal it was, but certainly not quick.
At some point in my production career I learned that usually the “sexiest” jobs also happened to be the most personally taxing ones. Anything involving a celebrity makes the job of a producer three times as difficult. A brand partnership between two “cool” brands means twice as many clients and twice as many notes and rounds of feedback. While the cool clients and the celebrity may attract a cool director and production company, that also means even further challenging personalities and egos to manage. For whatever reason it never seems like the cool projects necessarily get more budget and so the production company is always quick to remind you how lucky you are to have such a unique talent working on this at a reduced rate. At the end of the day the types of projects I have worked on are still going to result in an ad or a piece of “branded content” that most people in your life will not say, wow I saw that cool ad you did!