Halfway around the world for a new career
Ok, this tale dates way back to when I was trying to escape Australia to work in the film industry in Europe. Leaving town with $2.5k to my name after blowing the other half on a video camera. I had such a good one year exchange in Sweden doing shots of skane akavit and self-teaching me highend 3d Softimage and Alias Power Animator on SGI's with 64mb of RAM that cost about what I make in a year that I wanted to return.
So I'm in contact with this guy in Potsdam who is looking for staff for a pioneering kids tv series and it is 1998. I have German and UK family so it was not utter culture shock or anything. Right before Maya is released on PCs and the floor crashes out of SGI's stock price and they vacate that funky purple building in Mountain View, CA for a certain expanding search startup. It is Sunday night 1am in Sydney and he says on the phone to just get there, don't worry, he has a job for me. I think I left on a one way Thai flight to Copenhagen, British passport in tow for my new life round about the Monday and I'm at Kastrup early the next morning, taking a train to Goteborg via the old booze boat crossing to stay with friends before starting my new job.
Wednesday I book an overnight train ordeal - Goteborg - Malmo - Trelleborg - train goes on boat 4hrs to Sassnitz and from 3 to about 8am rolls on to Berlin Hauptbahnhof. At the time there was no crosstown except the sBahn. I'm in Potsdam fried but chipper for 9am after a taxi out to the company which was near the Glienicke Brucke. They have no idea who I am but tell me it has happened before so just go sit with some of the other artists and the boss should be in by lunchtime. No one can find him but he finally gets there at 3 and agrees to see me at 4. Thankfully they were kind enough to pay for a decent pension.
So I noticed around the office that most of the staff were women which was a tad unusual in the 3d biz and most of them were Vancouver film school grads. They told me a little about how they were all in salary arrears with those there the longest owed 3 months pay. Funny cause the gig was heavily funded by the German government and there was a mountain of overpriced SGI kit everywhere.
I then went to one of the strangest interviews I will probably ever have. The boss is a short man, a bit overweight with thin wirey hair, long and slicked back. Everything I might imagine a cliched porn director might look like and hey it was Berlin. There's a big cage in his office which was for his rottweiler that he went everywhere with. He says he wants me to do a trial and the other bit was that he wanted to be sure I noticed how many women were working there. To be sure he had scoured the world for them and the clincher was as he told me he did not want me sleazing on them. Not remotely my style but a first real life example of projection in action looking back.
So of course my trial started the next week so Friday night overnight back to Gothenburg as I barely brought anything with me cause I thought I had a job to confirm and then back on the same train train boat train the Sunday night. I was then joined by a Norwegian guy in the same boat and they put him in the same pension. The next 3 days of trial confirmed everyone had not been paid. The boss was nowhere to be seen the whole week, the main PA obviously wasn't paid either and had apparently done a runner with the petty cash box and the company car and the future of the job was in doubt.
Myself and Norwegian colleague became good friends, decided there was not much chance of a job and enjoyed the hotel and meal + drink expenses and bailed to await the outcome. He kept chasing them and eventually got offered a role a month later he didn't take. I couldn't cause I had no cash. Flew to London and holed up with family friends and eventually got a foot in the door. So all I can say is anyone who got expenses for all the trips above is lucky they never chose to work in broadcast and film. I think the only other junket I ever got was a SAS business class flight to Norrkoping for a game company that later wanted to hire me. Once they had, it was one more on economy from there. Lol, but at least it wasn't on the early days of Ryanair to Skavsta I was later to endure.
The production I later heard from a couple of the ladies went bust and there was a German government investigation into where the money went. Germany never did really become a major centre for the 3d entertainment industry and bits of the gig, the Stevie Stardust Show were sold off around the world, desperate to make some return on all that effort. My Norwegian friend went on to work on Free Jimi which was about a drug addled elephant in a failing circus which to the Scandinavian students I teach 3d to today back in Sydney became a bit of a childhood cult classic.
Thanks for reading!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
