I was visiting a college the other day, talking to a couple of really young students, who were training to be CG Effects guys, or video game designers, or the like. They’d been training in this really cool environment for a few years and now they were about to go out into the world and try to land jobs. They were telling me how hard and anxiety provoking that was and, in the very next breath, after they found out that I was involved in corporate video production they asked me, “Don’t you want to ever do anything more creative?”

Putting aside how insulting I found that for a second, I realized that they just didn’t have enough experience to get it yet. I’m not saying that they were young and naive and full of the promise of youth, and that I’m an old, cynical bastard (although it could be argued that that is true). I’m saying they just didn’t get how thankful I am every day that I get to do this for a living. I might be working on just adding voice overs to, and editing screencasts to flow better, for a full week, and still, I can honestly say that I have fun. Every job still teaches me something and I never go into it looking down my nose at the task in hand because it isn’t creative enough for my reel.

Most of my day job isn’t art; it’s unquestionably corporate. I try to bring an artistic sensibility to everything I do but I understand that there is always a manager, a boss, or a client to answer to. My job is not to impose my taste on them. My job is to make what they’re envisaging, better than it was in their imagination.

If you’re in my field, and you expect to make uncompromising art every day, you’re going to be miserable. This amazing little documentary came to me at a timely moment. You have to be able to separate your art from commerce in your creative life. If you leave college thinking EA is going to let you design huge chunks of a game before you’ve proved yourself on much smaller, more mundane tasks, you may be in for a wake up call.

I love coming to work every day. I love what I do. When a client sees what I’ve made for them, and it’s better than they expected, and they can’t believe how much bang I gave them for their buck, then, I know, I’m where I belong.