June Something - Day 5

[verushka70]

Day 5: If you could go back in time and help create a foundational work (be it book, show, movie, etc.) what would it be and what would your role be?

That's a hard one. I guess I can think of multiple shows where I wish I'd been a producer or a network exec so they wouldn't be cancelled. For some of them (due South, Forever Knight), so they wouldn't be cancelled at the end of every. Damn. Season. and have to be revived again until they got the final axe.

If I could've been part of the original Star Wars, I would've wanted to be one of the matte artists painting the starscapes and spacescapes on glass. I used to be a regular reader of Starlog when it first came out and into the early to mid-80s, and I read about how the special effects were created with every successive sci-fi/fantasy movie that came out, with great interest.

So many artists were involved in special effects for classic post-ST:TOS seventies sci-fi films like Star Wars, Alien, etc. With the advent of CGI, I'm not even sure that "matte artist" is a job anymore. I doubt if it is, and if it still is, I imagine it's hard to get one of those jobs because so many out of work artists are vying for them.

I took three years of painting in high school... I think I would've really loved being a matte artist working on Star Wars.

Comments

[verushka70]

Aww. I love that you naively sent them a resume! Do you remember what the rejection letter was like? I hope it went along encouraging lines like, "We're very sorry; we can't hire you... but thank you for trying, and keep dreaming big, kid!"

[writedragon]

It wasn't quite that sweet -- it was a pre-printed postcard (I imagine they got zillions of resumes). Still though; today you wouldn't even get an email response.