Trust Your Instincts

UPDATED! Scroll to the end of the article for the coda to this story…

I had a very interesting experience in the past few days, one that has set off some alarm bells and shown me a situation to which my instinctual response is “avoid it as if it were a plague-ridden torture-zombie-ninja”. Because, you know, they’re quite scary.

Finding work in London has been tricky. It’s out there, and I see plenty of great-sounding jobs advertised, and I apply for all of them, but a city so densely populated as London has some fierce competition for them. It’s difficult, and can sometimes be a little deflating. Therefore, when something comes along, no matter how meager a prospect it represents, one would be inclined to go for it. I don’t need much money, just enough to pay my rent and feed me — at least, to begin with.

So my attention was caught by one advertisement on Mandy.com, which read something like this:

Motion Graphics support needed with project. Only one day at present but ongoing work will be needed as the project develops.

Please do contact us asap.

I applied, and got a response fairly quickly. Now, because the internet is the kind of place it is, and I’m the kind of guy that I am, I won’t name the person in question. I will refer to this person as “AA“, and that is as much info as I will give out.

Anyway, AA’s response read like this:

Hi Tom,

Please look at this… I will call you this morning

[ here he supplied a link to a video file that he, I presumed, wanted me to replicate, or otherwise apply some post-production trickery ]

AA

Sounded good. While I waited for his call, I had a look at the website of his company, and was slightly underwhelmed. There were a few examples of graphics, and they weren’t excellent. You know, lower thirds made from default Motion templates, things like that. But that’s okay, because the graphics were not the focus, which presumably is why someone like myself was required. What did concern me, however, was that among other things, he produces wedding videos. Freaking wedding freaking videos!

So this set off a small alarm bell, if only because wedding videos are like the elephant’s graveyard of the film industry: it’s where talented filmmakers go to die. Of course, every filmmaker has documented someone’s wedding at some point or other; a friend, relative, friend-of-a-friend… Anyway, the point is that I would like to aim higher than wedding videos in my chosen field. So I waited for his call, which did not come.

That afternoon, I wrote this to him:

Hi AA

I saw the video. I think I can see what you want to achieve, although of course I shall not get ahead of things, and will await your call.

Tom

The following day, I got this response:

Didn’t get a chance to call… Best to chase me really.. AA

Hmmm. Okay, fair enough. I took things through to the logical conclusion and wrote back:

Perhaps I should come see you? TfL notwithstanding, I can meet you any time. I looked up the address given on your website, seems easy enough to get there.

Let me know. Will call on Monday if I don’t hear back from you.

Tom

He wrote back:

Tom, sorry, what for? I am very busy, and we can communicate on the telephone. AA

“What for”? What goddamn FOR? To meet him, of course! If we are to work together, or otherwise do business, I figure we had to meet each other at some point. Feel out the situation, get an understanding of one another. Presumably, he’d want to meet the person he’s purporting to give money to.

Still, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I am, after all, new to the area — maybe things are done differently here. I wrote back:

Sorry, I’m new to London, and in particular the industry here, so I’m not always sure on protocol. Not a problem, though.

Tom

His reply:

Tom, my response has nothing to do with the industry…
I am a busy Producer and value my time. Aa

Which kind of says it all, really. By this time, the alarm was too loud, annoying and insistent to ignore. I mean he may be busy, I get that, but AA, you make wedding videos! You’re hardly Dino di Laurentiis, or Jerry Bruckheimer. In fact, I hear that Bruckheimer is quite generous with his time, and he definitely deals with much grander and more pressing issues than AA does, I’m sure.

Just to be sure, I had my girlfriend look over this email conversation, to gauge her opinion. She said:

It’s crazy! He told you to chase him, and when you tried to, he said he’s too busy to bother with you.

Now, obviously, I’ve never met AA. Which is good, because it makes it easy to imagine him with puffy directing pants, and carrying himself haughtily as he minces about, pushing around his poor minions as he deludes himself that he’s making wonderful art in the medium of film.

I don’t mean to pour out lots of vitriol towards the guy, but messages such as these leave me little choice. Suffice it to say, I do not wish to work for, or with, AA. I mean, he makes wedding videos!

So no, AA, I won’t be contacting you any more. I’d hate to devalue your time by doing so.

---

211½ hours later …

Sitting at home, watching TV aimlessly, I received a phone call, and answered it immediately:

“Good afternoon, this is Tom speaking.”

“Tom,” came the reply, “you got in touch with me regarding the position I advertised.”

“Oh yes,” I said, noting that this fellow didn’t introduce himself or even explain properly which advertisement this was.

“Look, I actually went with someone else, but I’ve lost his number. Tell me, are you busy on Thursday?”

I was not.

“Um,” I thought, summoning my instincts to drive me forward. “Yeah, I’m actually busy on Thursday, unfortunately.”

“Right then,” he said. “Bye.” He hung up before he even finished the word ‘bye.’

My instincts told me that I was talking to AA. I don’t know how he possibly felt that telling me he had chosen someone else above myself, and assuming I’d want to work for him knowing I was second-best, and that someone else was being screwed out of work due to his laziness… Plus the fact that he didn’t introduce himself. Well, I felt that it was in my interests to be too busy for him.

Afterwards, I checked the number from my call log, and compared it to the number in AA’s email: exact match.

This was a nice little coda that just proved to me that I was right to trust my instincts. AA, you strike me as a very poor producer. In fact, I doubt you could produce an apple in an orchard, because you’d be so full of your self-importance that you’d be trying to tell the trees how they should grow; the leaves how to be green; the apples how to fall.

Good luck to you, sir, because you’ve proven to me that working for you is the worst mistake I could make.