Thursday, December 6, 2007

Small moments of visual freedom.

For the past several months, I've been working temporary administrative jobs at a couple of advertising firms. It's not an industry I'm particularly interested in, except from the creative standpoint - Stanely Kubrick once said that the best filmmaking nowadays is in commercials. Of course, that was during the 90's... actual filmmaking may have caught up a bit. I'm often assigned Powerpoint presentations, or data entry, or... more Powerpoint presentations. Every once in a while I have to do a little video editing or something else above my paygrade, but for the most part it's repetitive, mind-numbing work. I frankly don't mind that - I prefer my day jobs to be as uncreative as possible; why should I waste creative energy on projects that I have no vested interest in beyond a steady paycheck? And as a little aside, it is rather nice to have a steady-ish income again - the past year or so has been rather difficult.

Anyway, at these temp jobs, the days tend to blend together, they all seem the same... except every so often you get a little treat. Whether it's Hanson showing up and playing a lunchtime acoustic set at your office on top of a mall, or getting to watch the World Cup on huge flatscreens in the employee lounge... there actually are little gems to be found in the grey mass that is corporate America.

Even if it's just a glimpse of the sunset over Jersey through the only window within 100 feet of your desk.


5 comments:

Mowchek said...

I think that line from Kubrick is a misquote. Probs taken out of context from something he said about Michelob ads.

Shyaporn said...

Well, it's paraphrased to be sure. I think what he actually said was something along the lines of the best filmmaking was going on in beer ads. And he was probably being facetious.

But that's not really counter to the point I was making.

Mowchek said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mowchek said...

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0077.html

Unknown said...

I so completely hear you on appreciating the scenery outside your office window. Many an afternoon I was stressing, but one glance at the mountains surrounding San Diego, and all was forgotten. I worked at SDSU, and I had a clear view of the cross on top of Mt. Helix in La Mesa. Dude, don't get better than that. Oh and the asian guy across the hall from me was totally HAWT!