Worth it?

As I worked over the weekend, I wondered to myself how one could do this job, year in and year out. The huge advange that this work has are the many challenges. The art and technical obstacles constantly change from show to show, and even despite some of the extremely long hours, I find the little (or big!) challenges worth it. I've been here at Digital Domain for almost a year! My year anniversary is sometime near the end of March. I can't believe it. Things have just stretched along, from show to show, Flags to Letters, to Robinsons, and now Pirates. I'll be done come late April though, when the show is theoretically done. Until then, it's six day weeks, 10+ hr days.

We've got a huge workload ahead of us, but it looks like it will come together fairly efficiently. In order to increase that efficiency, I've been tasked with helping out some of the compositors who have rolled onto Pirates on one of our many sequences. The sequence in question involves a fair amount of keying. Keying with bluescreens, and what I affectionately call sky screens. Those shots with no color at all, similar to what we accomplished on Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. You know, those tough shots. I feel pretty honored to be selected for this, simply because I'll be entering into the lead category for compositors here at Digital Domain by doing a lot helping out others than just working on my own. I'll be working under my current lead, helping him with problems on one of his many sequences, but not attending the leads meetings, and most likely not getting official lead credit on the film. Most (if not all) leads here are staff, which means they're paid for their downtime and vacation, and have other benefits. At this point, I'm not too concerned about credits. As long as I'm having fun and working on challenging shots, I don't mind. Credits are the icing on an otherwise delicious cake.

I had a wicked weekend (aside from working on Saturday). Went out to the Santa Monica mountains for the first time, and finally experienced my first SoCal singletrack.. Hot damn.. Almost as nice as some east coast singletrack, but definitely doesn't hold a candle to North Shore singletrack. The first couple times we hit the North Shore, it was very intimidating, and definitely prepares you for almost anything in other parts of the country. Just the technicality of all the trails makes for a very adrenaline pumping experience. The trail we hit yesterday was not overly technical, but had some wicked tabletops and drops, which I had a blast flying over. We however had to remain vigilant, as the trail was also shared by hikers. Most of the time we encountered them during straight sections, but we did almost run into one on a tight sweeping curve!

I have no idea what the rest of this week holds, but I'll be sure and let you, my loyal readers, know!