Today was my last day of being 21. Turning another year older, people tend to look back and think of that they’ve accomplished since their last birthday.
This time last year I was working in a fishmongers, I was still in university, and I had just started two different internships – one with a small distribution company, and another with a community television station. I had just finished a short film that I had made with a group of people at university, which would start a new love.
Presently, I am not working at a fishmongers, I’ve graduated university, and I currently am ‘working’ with a small sound company, more on this in a second. That’s pretty much all I’ve done in the year 2014.
I have just finished another short film, made for an honours student at university, where I recorded and mixed all the sound on her half-an-hour-long film. I’m really proud of how it turned out. It was the longest film that I’ve worked on, and the only the second time where I’ve been solely responsible for an entire section of a film, the first time being the one made last year. Sound is such a scary aspect of films, but no one seems to really pay much attention to it. Sound is such an unconscious part of the film watching experience that audiences don’t realise it’s there (although, that is the entire aim). Being relatively inexperienced at the whole ‘sound’ thing, this is especially scary for me, as I don’t have any expertise to fall back upon if I get in trouble. Yes, I had people to talk to if I had issues, but apart from that, everything heard in the film was entirely my doing. So if something went wrong, it was all my fault. That being said, I got some pretty good feedback so I’m quite proud of how I did.
Back to ‘working’ with the sound company. I say this because while I do work, I don’t get paid. Basically, it’s another internship. This time, however, I actually have tasks that are my own. At other internships that I’ve held, I was responsible (if you could call it that) for sending off parcels or making people tea. Other times I would be doing the same work as the actual employees, but not being paid or it. Neither of these environments are conducive of learning. This time having my own work to do seems, in my mind, that it’s worth my while staying. I know it isn’t, but it’s filling in my time whilst I look for an actual job.
That’s all I want – to be paid for work that I do, is that so much to ask for? At the moment I casually work in the TV studio at my university, which I love. It’s a great opportunity to meet people who work in the industry, create new contacts, or just spend the day working in a place I love with people I love.
So, starting tomorrow I’m going to give myself goals. I’m not going to spend the next year bumming around waiting for work to come to me. I’m going to aim to apply to at least three jobs a week. It might not seem much considering I’m seriously looking for work, but at least it’s more than I’m doing currently (watching youtube all day). I find it really hard to motivate myself to apply for jobs, I don’t know why. It really isn’t difficult, I think I’m just scared of showing other people what I’ve done and having to prove myself to someone I don’t know. Oh well, baby steps. I also want to start making things. I know I’ve said this before, but I really want to start doing something – anything. Time to get a group and start making!
Alicia Writes 