Ten years really flies by.
Ten years later, I'm within eyesight of the cubicle. It's empty. Every once and a while I'll go over and sit in it to remind myself how far I've gone.
Figuratively of course. Literally, I've gone about twenty seven feet.
As I sit back and think about the last ten years, there are three people who keep popping into my head. My Dad, Phil Lima, my teacher and early mentor, Bill Clark, and my boss, Frank Vitale.Not to say that there aren't other people worthy of recognition, but these three men helped me get to where I am today.
Can I Hold The Camera?
Some of my earliest memories are a little blinding. That's because my Dad used to carry around this 100 megawatt light along with his VCR Camcorder combination; filming the Lima Family memories.
A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with Dad about the camera setup and the insanity of carrying around a 400 pound contraption with the blinding headlights. Dad told me that he remembers his father walking around with a Super 8 and a contraption dubbed "The Antlers". It was a similar setup that produced the same results; great family memories and burning retinas.
Whenever I saw my Dad holding the video camera, I remember wanting to hold it. I can't remember ever doing so, which was smart on my Dad's part for two reasons.
One, if I did hold it, I would have broken a very expensive piece of equipment.
Two, if I did hold it, I might have lost interest in ever holding a video camera again.
Everyone knows how much I love gadgets, gizmos, and widgets. I got that from my Dad.
Dad is the original gadget man. He bought an Apple IIGS computer with a floppy disk hard drive. It had a word processor.
Dad later replaced the IIGS with a PowerMac. It came with 256 megabytes of internal memory and my very first computer video game, Power Pete. I remember Dad and I both proudly exclaiming; "256 MB of memory! We'll never fill this thing up!".
It was still weird being one of the only kids with a Mac computer. I had AppleWorks, not Word. I had to convert everything over to PC in order to hand in a digital file.
It was weird not having a right click button.
If Dad ever let me hold the camera or if Dad ever broke down and got a PC, I always wonder, am I still where I am today?
Let Me Show You How to Hold the Camera
Going into my senior year at North Rockland High School, I had the opportunity to sign up for a television production class, taught by Mr. Clark. It sounded interesting, especially since I was planning on studying journalism when I got to college.
Mr. Clark showed me how to edit, how to shoot, how to run a mixer and a lighting board. He showed me how to run a mini tv station. He let us go out on assignment and cover news stories. He explained the technical and let us be creative. (The last show we ever did comes to mind).
We produced a weekly television show that broadcast on the local cable access station.Thanks to Mr. Clark, I was almost a year ahead of my production class when I got to college.
That class produced some amazing talent. I think we all know that Mr. Clark had a hand in that. Two classmates went on to become on-camera talent, while a bunch of us found ourselves in the film/video production field.
That's an amazing success rate for one class; and it's all thanks to Mr. Clark.
I still have the fake cactus plant.
Without everything that Mr. Clark taught me, I know I wouldn't be where I am today.
Go Do Stuff With the Camera
After graduating college, I was faced with the reality that finding a job in film production is virtually impossible.
Despite my horrible senior film, or maybe in spite of it, Frank Vitale offered me a job working in the Audio Visual Department at the March of Dimes.I don't know what he saw in me that made him think I would be a good investment. Maybe he remembered the little kid running around the Stony Point Little League ball field and was doing my parents a favor.
Whatever the reason, I'm grateful that he did. I made a promise to myself that I would never let him regret that decision.
Ten years later, I sit in an office next to his. In between shouting through the walls to each other, we've done some pretty amazing things.
We brought the March of Dimes into the digital age. In ten years we went from shooting on Beta and VHS, to miniDV, to Tapeless HD and DSLRs. We've gone from delivering VHS tapes and DVDs in the mail, to data files that can be sent seamlessly over the web.
Our Youtube account now has over 15 million views. That's a lot when you realize it's just a bunch of videos educating people about pregnancy.When I asked to move our department out of Avid into Final Cut Pro, he backed me up. We used to produce or edit twenty or so projects a year.
Now it's closer to two hundred a year.
Frank has let me take my camera to places I never imagined I'd go; Indianapolis, Dallas, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Kansas City, Atlanta.
Not because they're some far off exotic place, mostly because I was deathly afraid of flying when I first joined the team.
We've done some important work, helping to educate the public about the seriousness of prematurity. We've done a lot of silly stuff too.
No matter what I'm working on, Frank's always let me just "go". It's an amazing feeling to be able to work in that way; to try something new without fear of what might happen if it doesn't work.Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
So, as I sit at my desk and reflect on the last ten years, I can't do so without thinking about how these three guys shaped and changed my life.
Dad gave me the tools. Mr. Clark showed me how to use them. Frank lets me use them.
It's amazing how something so simple, like holding a camera, can change a person's life.
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