@Thousand:
It's work. Just because it doesn't seem hard doesn't mean it isn't or doesn't have its own difficulties especially if you want to be good at it. You can say "it's just watching a movie" but you try watching the same movie over and over no matter how bad or boring it might be and having to write notes about it, doing research, laboring over a script and having to refine it to make sure its funny, making or finding props, act in front of a camera and put on a good performance and somehow bring it all together. I don't know why you're trying to insist they're having an easy time of it or it never gets hard. It's work, they love their job especially the freedom of creativity they get but anything routine and time-consuming becomes tedious but they still do it because it's work and they enjoy it. But it's hard and at times really hard, you try and play Ultima 9 all day let alone all week, see how you fare.
Hidden for courtesy, as my verbosity shines through once more. My ability to say a lot with so little actual points is how I wrung out a 3,000 word breaking dawn review focusing on the 3 "good" parts of the movie. It's also how I've made it through all of my English classes, both high school and college.
Though this time it's really not that bad.
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Did you not read my posts? That's what I do. I'm one of two film reviewers for my campus' news. I see whatever movie(s) assigned to me (so I don't even get to pick it.) I watch it at least twice in back to back showings so I have good enough notes to do and write-up for the paper. Then I have to record a video review. And, every now and then, if they need padding, I'll get called in to do a short segment on our actual news broadcast (though that mainly happens if it's a movie released on a Wednesday)
And more often or not I'm reviewing two films a week.
I'm not trying to insist that it never gets hard. What I'm insisting is that they're not bothered by it. That they never have that moment of "I wish I could just quit." That most other people do. And yes, I know that those who are balancing this on top of another job are probably going to hit those moments, but those are the weeks that they can take a breather and not release a review.
But I'm not sure how many people are actually balancing multiple jobs, I was apparently very mistaken about how many get full support from the site, and I'm really impressed by that.
And I really, really have to disagree that anything routine and time consuming becomes tedious. Not even looking at what I do know, but back in high school I did marching band. And not just "marching band." But marching ban. The difference is that school I went to took it beyond seriously. My freshman year we won grand nationals at Bands of America, but the school was always a perennial contender at grand nationals, as were were at our own state championship. 99% of the time it was either us or one other school winning it, with the other being runner up, which created a nice little rivalry.
But the point is, we took marching band as gospel. We'd start mid July. 6 am till 12pm marching on pavement, before it got hot (though, being Texas, it was usually up to the mid 90s by then) then we'd break for a 1 hour lunch, come back and have music rehearsals. Then once the school year started (a month later mind you) we'd have 2 hours before school to rehearse (required hours) then we'd have our normal classes, then 4 ("volunteer" hours after school. They had to call them that simply for legal reasons. And they truly were volunteer, but no one skipped, if you wanted to march, you had to be the best you could be, and this is when he got there.) We did that Mon-Thurs. Then Friday we had games. Saturday's we got off for the first month of school, then Invitationals start, so by the end of the semester we had one day off.
And this was just extra curricular stuff. We didn't get paid. It was long hours, and it was nothing but routine. But it never got boring. So that's the point I'm trying to make.
Yeah, when I worked at Kroger as a cashier, those were long, routine, tedious hours, but I hated that job.
Marching Band, not tedious. Writing reviews not tedious.
And this summer I'm interning on at a film shoot as 2nd AC/grip. Hours don't get much longer than this. Today and yesterday were the first days I've really had off in weeks, as for the past two weeks we;ve been running 18 hour days. I get tomorrow, off before it's back to set for a final to weeks till wrap. It's easy for things to get tedious here, since as 2nd AC I'm in charge of Slates and Marks which require some good attention to detail, and as a grip I'm nothing more than a hand man setting up sets and lights and doing heavy lifting. It's real easy to get discouraged and not like what I'm doing, but I got lucky because we're a small tight crew and our director and producer aren't just barking orders. If I was working for an absolute terrible director and/or producer, then yeah things could get a bit weary, especially considering what I'm doing.
Which is why I'll acknowledge that I made what was probably too broad of a generalization. I'm sure there are a couple on the site who view this as something they have to do and absolutely hate, but then I look at Lindsay and see her watching the worst possible film reviewed by anyone on the site, since A Serbian Film made its round, in Freddy Got Fingered and we see her behind the scenes having a fun time watching it with her friends. We see them having even more fun recording the review. So she took something that had the possibility of being horrible and tedious and something she had to fight to get through and had a blast with it. That's how I imagine most of the reviewers do it. Film Brain watches with his friends that still occasionally pop up in his videos, Phelous watches with his Mortal Comedy pals and his sister. And I think Doug watches his stuff with Rob, or at least I assume he does by the writer's credit, and I'd like to think that occassionally Doug's wife watches his movies with him. There's no reason for them to let the reviews get them down or make what they're doing tedious, as they have the power, of oft utilize it to make the process enjoyable.
And I guess that's really my whole point.
And I'm not going close to Ultima-9 with a 10ft pole. I don't watch enough of Spoony's stuff to know anything about him. Him and Brad are essentially the only reviewers on the site I never really liked, not really sure why.
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Anyway, I'm horribly regretting getting into this; I've only just really started trying to get really active in the site, and I seem to have turned some people against me, all over the word "work."
Ay, yi, yi, not my best movie is it?