Moving Forward

When I returned to LA in November, I moved into a new apartment down in Culver City, much closer to work.  It was also much closer to the church I had begun attending, Shoreline West.  Interestingly that church had been started by Scott Mehl, my old peer advisor from back in college.  He lived within walking distance from my new apartment, and I started attending a Bible study at his house.  Even though my roommate worked at our new office location, he decided to stay in Hollywood, so unable to find a roommate in my new location, I was now living alone.

At work, we started experimenting with using DSLR cameras to shoot video, which was the first step in a process that steered the course of our company for years to come. Once again, my role in playing with the newest technology further secured my position as an innovator in my industry.  And my company continued to strengthen the relationships we had with hardware and software manufacturers, in part due to the level of technical feedback I was able to provide.

In preparation for our upcoming feature with the SEALS, we began to research new approaches and workflows.  The systems that I had put in place up to that point were very economical, and had served us well on our shorter commercial projects.  But we recognized that they wouldn’t scale well for the larger projects on the horizon.  So we began to invest in much more expensive solutions, which were more in line with the traditional approach taken by most companies in our industry.  So I put together Bandito’s first Avid system, and we hired someone new to help us use it, since that would require a complete overhaul to how we usually worked.

Siobhan was our first legitimate editorial assistant, and came from a very different background.  She was quite an interesting character for me to work with.  You would be hard pressed to find two people who were more opposite.  She was very confrontational and vocal about her perspective.  I was pretty startled by how little she knew about video work, and she was probably startled by how little I knew about traditional film work.  So we each had a lot to learn.  And while we butted heads frequently in our approaches to various problems, that usually eventually led to finding good solutions, since we would have to satisfy both of our objections.  After a few weeks of constant debates and arguments, we eventually came up with a reasonable initial plan for the movie.

Even with her differences, she was soon a closer friend than anyone else in the office.  We would never socialize outside of work, because I had never done most of the things she did for recreation, and still have no intention to do so.  But we had very good talks, because she wouldn’t hesitate to ask very personal questions, and I would end my answers with “how about you?”  She was probably the first person I really became friends with, who had a totally different world view.  We had very different beliefs and values, but still respected one another.