Why is Everyone’s Career So Cool?

If you follow people’s social media accounts in the production entertainment industries, you’d think everyone, everyday are living the best life.  Everything goes their way. And every day is successful and loaded with adventures. That’s not to say everyone’s post are Bull Sh** T. There are a lot of people doing cool gigs.  Just not every minute of every day.

Thankfully, being as old as dirt, I’ve lived most of my professional life before social media. In doing so I had to actually learn and observe in the “real”. 

Living in the “real” gave me a front row seat to what others were actually doing or NOT doing.

I learned more from seeing people screw up and then find a way to recover, then seeing people only succeed. (today’s fake social media life).

If you talk to any experienced professional, they all have stories about the time the show went off the rails. Maybe it was the time they pressed the wrong control, the time the lip sync vocal tracks crashed.  The time network’s master control punched up the wrong show or when the Broadway stage manager dropped their show book and lost control of the cues. These stories go on and on.

The good news is with those stories comes a “fix”. “… after that I (we) made sure that never happened again by…”

Unfortunately, almost no one posts their screw ups. They only give you the wins.

It’s like a chronic gambler who will always tell you how much they won but never gives you their net balance which includes their losses.    

Everyone has wins and losses…EVERYONE!

Working in the visual medium we use a camera lens to tell the audience what we want them to look at and not look at.  By using the camera to frame and compose our shots we develop and tell OUR story, the one we want everyone to believe, moment by moment.

The same is true with social media. They are framing their shot, tags, text to tell you what they want to be real, NOT what actually was the real.

Maybe they were just making copies of the rundown for the crew but their pics seem like they we assisting the director.

Maybe they were just straightening cables in the recording studio and not collaborating with the artist on cord phrasing. 

Maybe they were standing in the wings of the theater waiting to move a set piece off the stage but their pics framing seems like they were stage managing.

Everyday someone tells me they might as well get out of the biz because they follow this person who has only been in the biz a year and is killing it. “According to their IG they just landed a gig producing a feature film with a huge budget. It’s real because they posted pics of the set today.”

Ummmm NO! Regardless of what their posts look like ….that isn’t happening! They may be on the set …but …producing a huge budgeted feature? No.

There is more to the story then what you’re being told or shown.

I’m telling you all this because you are not falling behind your peers regardless of what their posts look like. They are just good at posting a story of what they wish was happening.

They are usually more concerned about impressing their followers with what they want to them believe. Then actually paying attention, learning and impressing the people they are currently working with.

When you become so busy promoting and faking your career to your “friends” or “followers”, your missing out on learning what’s happening all around you minute by minute on the gig.

Don’t worry about who seems to be doing what. That has nothing to do with your career.

Don’t try and keep up with your friends’ fake career by faking your current involvement in a production.

Put the phone down. Actually, pay attention and absorb everything that is happening on the gig. See where you might be able to help. Holding a ladder, sweeping a studio floor, helping move gear when needed, etc.

Those might not be “post” worthy, but definitely will get you noticed by the right people and will absolutely be CAREER WORTHY.