The Ken Burns Effect

When I was maybe 10 years old, I started watching documentaries for fun. The first ones I watched were those by Ken Burns, shown on PBS. When I started making documentaries of my own, the fact that I could bring stills to life like Ken Burns did was incredibly cool, and I was really proud of myself. Ken Burns talked about his signature "moves" on POV recently. Enjoy.

Bored now.

For the first time in ten years, I'm completely unemployed. No UChicago, no AF temp job. It's been about a week. I'm miserable. I'm beginning to think I'm the type of person who can become lost without structure and purpose, but I can't be sure, since this has never happened to me. In general, my day to day activities and discipline haven't changed much since my previous arrangement of having two work-at-home jobs has finished, but the feeling is markedly different.

My first order of business during my last week with The University of Chicago was to secure a volunteer arrangement, something that could consistently get me out of the apartment and around the city I haven't yet begun to explore. I sent an email to Educational Video Center, a place a lot like a job I had back in 2007-08, and got a call the same day. Monday through Thursday, 2-5, I am a teaching assistant for two classes teaching social justice documentary filmmaking to high school/alternative school students. So that's something. (Perhaps more on this in another post.)

Other than that, my existence consists of applying to at least one job a day (though that drive has been waning), and interminably working on my production reel (UGH), so I can finally apply to all of those jobs in my queue that require one. I've also been teaching myself Adobe After Effects through online tutorials — and trying use it to come up with some kind of graphic identity for said reel. I usually end a variably productive morning with some Buffy or Angel, though I'm beginning to tire of it lately.

I'm beginning to tire of everything lately. As you can see, it's not for lack of things to do. As I've written here before, I can be by myself for hours and come up with an endless list of tasks I should take on. But for all of the busyness I put myself up to, lately, I still find myself thinking the word "bored" — a word and concept I loathe — and sometimes even saying it aloud. I don't believe one can be bored as long as there are things to take care of and thoughts to think and even people around (I guess). But I'm increasingly sad and bored and lethargic, and the false sense of discipline and purpose I give myself just isn't cutting it.

Now, if you know me, you are probably a bit surprised that I didn't plan for this, at least in part. But that's part of the problem: I did. I knew I might be unemployed for some period of time, but I thought I would be driven to give some attention to some of the priorities that had been back-burner'd over the past year. When I left Chicago in July, I did so with a vision of my temporarily-freelance existence, a picture that included cutting a feature-length documentary (pro-bono) for my friend DS and staying financially solvent through a few odd freelance editing jobs here and there through JS. Alas, DS reneged on the documentary after pressure from his production company — months of my work for nothing; I won't even be in the credits. And JS, well...that was probably doomed to begin with. I haven't heard from him in quite a while.

While I don't directly blame those guys for my current situation (wouldn't it have been great if I'd found a job here in NYC back in April?), and while I'm certainly grateful to have been able to live in this new, expensive city for three months now without much worry, I now find myself without any of the preplanned activities I'd banked on and been assured of just three months before, not to mention without the invaluable resume fodder I need to stand out in this insanely competitive market. I don't even want to broach the topic of money. It's just a disappointing situation, and I'm feeling helpless.

Unfortunately, the timing of my complete unemployment has come right as SM's work is ramping up. He has five classes, night lectures, reporting/field work, and hours of reading and writing assignments. By the time we're both home (thank God I'm out and about at least 3 hours of the day so I can say I get back from somewhere), I'm starving for connection, while he is stressing about school. I know I wrote here that I could go for days without talking to anyone, and I still think it currently holds true, but I don't think I realized how much purpose there is in working, even remotely, and resting assured that you will connect with at least someone, and that your work is meaningful to at least someone. Without that component, my world has shrunk that much more.

I'm volunteering at EVC in a program that isn't usually supported by others outside of the main teacher, so outside of helping students (who sometimes mistake me for one of them anyway) with camera work and learning FCP, I often feel superfluous. My friends here in NYC, with the exception of a few graciously involving people, all have their own lives and social groups, and they're often too busy or forgetful of my now-consistent presence to hang out. The perceptions of New York as an isolating place are starting to resonate. I have almost zero desire to get out and meet new people, I just miss having friends I could contact to hang out whenever, or friends with whom I'm comfortable enough to be some type of reliable social group. I remember feeling this way in 2009, after several friends of mine and SM's had left Chicago, and we didn't feel that bond with many people left in the city, so I know it's only a matter of time before that gets better. But feeling out of step with the busy, working world and with SM in school (and meeting new people there), it's hard to look very far ahead. I just hope I'm able to land a job before my money and sanity wear out.

A Little Career Daydreaming

I was recently thinking about career and end goals (a perfect storm of a well timed email from KAC and a future-oriented conversation with DS), and I'm fairly confident that this video has been my guiding inspiration since I was three or four years old. Isn't it amazing? The video opened up my mind to a new way of storytelling and a new view of the world from the behind the scenes that has proved to be even more influential than I thought: I think it pushed me into documentary filmmaking.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have always had one eye on education and the other visual media. From my babysitting jobs, to selling educational games at a toy store, to taking up photography, to teaching Chinese. Somewhere along the way, I discovered documentaries; first I watched them, then I wanted to study them, and finally I wanted to be part of making them. One of my favorite things about filmmaking is the behind the scenes nature of it, both in documenting how something works and, on a meta level, in thinking about and being a part of how such a piece is constructed. I also love the educational aspect: wondering about something, and then figuring it out — the pursuit of knowledge. To me, documentary has both of these aspects: you're pursuing knowledge and you're making something in the process that will in turn open up those doors for other people. And the small scale at which one can do this is fascinating: crayons, gardens (my introduction to jazz, by the way), plumbing systems. It follows that I think the most impressionable audience for this is young children. What cool ways to explain reality to children! In short, want to make videos like these. How to do this is what I've been trying to figure out. I really liked working for the University of Chicago because of the way we were supporting education with video. My favorite projects were for the Oriental Institute and the Mansueto Library. But the scope there includes promotional as well as educational video, so not every project could be like those. I'm trying to move into more specifically educational video work in my recent job search, so at least the content will be in the right place. It would be really cool if I could get into the creative aspect of that work, though. What I would love to do is to make those Sesame Street videos and/or come up with a similar show. That's where coming up with children's show/vignette ideas with KAC comes in. Hopefully one day we'll have our own show, and we can make all the crayon videos we want.