My job

I think it´s time I told you what I do all day here. After all, my job occupies most of my time and energy so it should receive some attention on the blog.
I will take today as an example of a normal day at work:
I got in by 9.30 and greeted the nice men who are painting our new office space. Yes, I´m the first to move in here. It´s just next door the old office. So I´m enjoying some peace and quiet, which is great for concentration. I´m also experiencing the fumes from the paint. If they influence me or not, I´m not sure. The walls are painted in white and neon green, and that will surely have an effect on me sooner or later.
Today we are working on a television commercial for a large Asian car maker. My job is to create a white road that becomes a curve of the logo, and append this to a filmed shot of a road, thus ending the commercial. I do this with a 3D graphics program.
So I check on the rendering (calculation) I´ve left on during the night. It turned out as I wanted.
I´ve been on this project since late last week, and today we are presenting it to our clients.

The chain of command is this:
- A client wishes to make a tv spot, so they contact their advertising agency.
- The agency comes up with the idea behind the commercial, which is approved by the client, and contracts a commercial producing company and the director for the project.
- The director does the necessary filming and appoints a post producer to supervise the post production, which includes everything from color correction, editing, overlaid graphics, sound, music and speaker.
- The post producer turns to the 3D department requesting visual elements to be added.
- The 3D department (in this case, me) gets on the job.

Yep, that´s how it works.
Naturally, all instances must approve the spot before it can be aired. But don´t kid yourself - this process can go awfully fast! It has happened more than once that I´ve laid the final hand to something by lunch time and when I turn on my tv that same night it´s already being broadcast!
Everything is fast in this business, for a normal project you will probably have no more than 3-4 days. On one hand it means working in a hurry until late hours, but on the other you know when you will be "free" again. The projects can´t mess you up for long periods of time.

We eat lunch in a really small meeting room. For a chilean, eating alone is depressing so everyone tries to fit at the table. Quite different from the culture I´m used to. As well as the topics of conversation, which really don´t have a lower limit. You may hear things a Swede would never share about himself or his personal life, and I quite admire their openness with each other.

So, right now I´m expecting news from the presentation. What will the people from the agency say? It will have a great impact on the days to come, I sense. Let´s hope they´ll only ask for minor changes, because I really need to start on the next project - a classic ladies´ commercial including blue liquid absorbation.

Whatever happens, I´ll be closing the shop in a few hours and heading home.
Fridays are special.