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Buffy Summers + not interested in men’s bullshit

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Spot The Goofs

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corrective action

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makeup is like a cross between painting and poking yourself in the eye

i like it

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I’m sad & i want material items so i can be cured for 5 minutes 

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harold, they’re lesbians

people are gay, steven 

i’m a lesbian, carl 

don’t be a transphobe, chad 

we support the gays, david 

i’m not jealous, flavio. i’m gay

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Fix Tired Eyes

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Why professionals deserve to be paid

Blog posts explaining the value of trained professionals in creative industries are already abundant online, but I need to vent as I’m getting increasingly frustrated while I’m stuck in career limbo.

Because of my exceedingly introverted nature and self-criticism (and imposter syndrome, and the NHS preventing my life from proceeding, and mental health problems etc etc), I am not good at networking or seeking out opportunities. However I love to help people, and my good nature has been easily exploited on numerous occasions.

"Filming something is easy, just prop your phone up and livestream the event on Facebook, why should I pay somebody hundreds to do it?"

Because the difference between the two final products will be night and day. You are not paying somebody to hit record and point a camera in auto mode in the general direction of the action – you are paying somebody who has spent years refining their expertise likely at great expense (personally, £45,000+ in student debt), who will provide specialist equipment that they have either invested in or rented (at great expense either way) to not only get the white balance right, and the exposure spot on so that highlights aren’t blown out but the image still has detail (and smoothly adjust while recording if needs be), and the constant critical focus adjustments, and the absolute undivided attention for hours on end (without even toilet breaks) to not only focus on the entire contents of the frame all the time but what’s happening outside the frame to potentially move to, on-the-fly composing aesthetically pleasing shot after shot as fluidly as possible, maintaining the ideal horizontal eyeline of the subject(s) without any half-bodies cut off at the sides of the shot. But of course, the product is still not yet finished, unlike a basic livestream.

After the event, the footage has to be stored indefinitely (another expense), and ideally backed-up (double the expense – it would roughly cost me just over £4 per hour of 4K video stored, which doesn't included the space also taken up by converted files and proxies etc. Doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up – I’ve spent over £500 so far on storage space for other people’s benefit), and, if needs be, conformed to match the framerate of other cameras potentially used (consuming more time and storage), and the external audio to be manually or automatically synced to each video file (time consuming), and, if it’s a complex or 4K edit, generating proxy files for faster editing (consuming yet more time and storage space), then trying to get psyched up to sit down for hours and hours at a time painstakingly editing something you’re not even being paid to do, coming back to it day after day with refreshed eyes and opinions on edit points, then the hours and hours of watching the project back in real-time, multiple times, noting down minor edit adjustments to commit because '95% of the way there' isn’t good enough, with such perfectionist high-standards causing endless frustrations and self-doubt of any talents or skills.

And personally, my heart isn’t in editing and it’s not my specialty. I can assemble a traditional edit, but I can’t do much with groovy digital effects and other more ‘creative’ editing. My heart is behind the camera. But, as a one-girl-band, I have to not only be the Director of Photography, but the First assistant camera, the Digital Imaging Technician, the Producer, the Director, the Editor, the Sound Recordist, the Sound Mixer, and the Colorist, as well as a few other roles that have slipped my mind. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of work simultaneously trying to juggle ~ten different roles. All for £0. Would you do that? Probably not. And I probably shouldn’t either, because it isn’t really getting me anywhere and it doesn’t help me feel like my work and effort holds any value. But as I said, I'm introverted and too good-natured so people walk all over me and I take what I can get...

I have the absolute bare minimum equipment for my base needs, which still cost several thousand pounds. Ideally, I’d expand my inventory with a much-needed fluid-head tripod (easily £400. Some fluid heads run over £10,000 without even legs included in the price), a desperately-needed focus assist monitor (~£470), a second camera body so that I can guarantee more than one angle without the stress of trying to find someone I can borrow a second camera from (£2,199), faster lenses for better low-light performance as well as more focal lengths covered (~£600-£1,000 per lens), a speedbooster lens mount adapter to get an extra f-stop and use Canon mount lenses (£150-£690 – either cheap new brand or the established industry go-to), a battery grip for uninterrupted recording (£45 for the knock-off, £270 for the OEM version), a gimbal for certain buttery-smooth shots adding ‘production value’ (£729, + £120 for the follow-focus). For those of you keeping count, it’s ultimately around £7,000 on top of the £3,000+ I’ve already invested.

If I had some, or ideally all, of the above equipment, I would feel more confident that I would be able to provide a service that people would see the value in paying for, and actively seek opportunities to further my career. Only having one camera body is extremely prohibitive for creatively covering an event (to differing degrees depending on the required outcome of the video), and I want to provide people with the very best possible outcome I can provide and achieve.

Ideally, I want to be working on projects with passionate crews, where I’m ideally the one conducting each shot, and everyone is getting paid reasonably for their particular specialities and time and working as a cohesive production unit. Instead, I’m doing everything for nothing and going nowhere because of it.

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public

Do you know what it feels like, simply walking along minding your own business, but so painfully aware of all the sniggering and remarks between people passing by. Always with my headphones on, but nothing playing; an excuse to ignore them, but I can hear the giggling, the remarks, the attempts to get my attention, the slurs. And every time, it hurts.

I wish I could be invisible again, I just want to blend in, to be accepted as normal, to be equal to everyone else. But there is no equality, there is no fairness. Not all lives can be improved with merely compassion (e.g. people born with physical limitations) but across the board it would be a much appreciated improvement. I’m just trying to live my life; we’re all just trying to live our lives. All of the pain in my life, and there is a lot of it in such a variety of areas, it's caused by people. Of course there are others out there having to live worse lives than mine, but the chances are that you the reader haven’t dealt with quite the continually worsening shit that I’ve been dealing with day after day. If you have a partner, or a car, or a steady job, or a ladder to the future, or some certainty about the next week or month, or possess any desirable skill that’s so hot right now. Or maybe you have all of those things. I have none of them, and less.

On top of everything I have to deal with just to get by, everything going on behind the facade of someone somehow managing to hold it together, and any hope for the sun coming out tomorrow being regularly knocked out of me, it would be nice if I could at least walk to the shop without feeling all the eyes on me, being made to feel abnormal, like some sort of freak.

If "it gets better", I'm still waiting for any sign at all.

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I just wanted to eat my sandwich.

image / twitter / facebook / patreon

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Oh Clark

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Signs Your Child May Need Glasses

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August 7, 1988 — see The Complete Peanuts 1987-1990

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The ultimate victory.

image | twitter | facebook