Survivor's Guilt

 ​SURVIVOR’S GUILT
 
noun: survivors guilt

1. a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident in which others died.

"he escaped with his life but suffered from survivor's guilt”
 
I feel like I’m dealing with a version of this right now.
If you’re not in TV or Movie production, you may not know this, but there is a severe work shortage going on right now. Between the pandemic, strikes by the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild, and a general reluctance of networks and studios to greenlight new productions, work has been extremely scarce for almost 3 years now.  The current unemployment rate among all US workers is 4.1 percent.  In the Film and Television industry, it’s more than 20 percent. Every week, I hear from at least 3 or more of my friends and colleagues in search of work. 

People who’ve worked in this field for years are changing careers.  Many of my former co-workers are now real estate agents, construction workers, insurance brokers, property managers, teachers, travel agents, and a host of other new fields.  Many who have tried to stick it out have been unemployed for months, even years.  I have one friend who has worked 2 weeks in the past year. Others survive on very low paying production jobs that they are ridiculously overqualified to do.  They drive for Uber Eats and Doordash.  They are losing their life savings, losing their cars and their homes.  It is a dark, depressing feeling and so many people are losing hope.  I just read yesterday of a woman in film production who ended her own life because of it.

But my story couldn’t be more different.  I have been in this industry for almost 44 years.  My longest period of involuntary unemployment came 12 years ago, and it lasted 3 months.  (I also took some time off years ago to travel and didn’t work for about 6 months, but that was by choice.)  
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I spent 10 years in network news in LA.  Then, for the last 34 years, I’ve been cutting long form documentaries and reality shows.  It’s been a good living.  When I first started out, editors were in a very exclusive club.  Before the days when everyone had digital editing software on their laptops and tablets and phones, editors worked in huge rooms with walls filled with monitors, video switchers, audio mixing boards and  giant reel to reel  videotape machines.  High end edit bays (they called them “the big iron”) cost a million dollars and up to build.  So they didn’t let just anyone sit down and play around.  You had to learn it from the ground up, and it took a long time.  And if you were one of the top guys, you were treated like royalty. Every post house tried to steal you away, because they knew your clients would follow you.

But those days are long gone.  Every college, and even most high schools now teach video production. This has created a glut of people all competing for the same jobs, and the pay rates keep dropping because the market is oversaturated with people willing to do it for less and less.  But, as I said, I have somehow managed to keep working without stop. 

I was informed in May that my employer was going out of business at the end of July, victim of the work slowdown among the networks.  We would finish up the shows that were already in production, but there would be no new orders.  You can’t produce shows if no one is paying for them.  I was given an “out date” for the 3rd week in July.  I immediately started a job search and contacted probably 100 or more companies looking for anything I could find.  Out of all that, I got one response from a company that wanted to “pencil me in” for a job in September.  As late July approached, I was heading into mild panic mode.   I started seriously wondering if  I could hack it as a GrubHub driver. 

​Friday, July 18th, was my last day on the job.  As of 6 p,m., I was unemployed.  And then, after a total of 2 hours being jobless, my phone rang.  It was a post-production executive I had worked with over 11 years ago.  The last time I’d talked to him was in 2013.  He asked if I was booked and I told him I was available.  “Can you start on Monday?”  HELL YES, I CAN START ON MONDAY!
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People tell me, “You keep getting hired because you’re good at what you do”.  And I won’t argue that.  After 44 years, I know I’m good at what I do. But… so are my friends who aren’t working.  Some of them are insanely talented, but they can’t even get an interview.  People say “You’re good at networking and keeping your name out there”.  My friends are good at all of that too.  They say “You have so many connections from over the years to call on”.  So do they.

So why am I working and they’re not?  I can’t explain it. There is apparently some great cosmic force in the universe that is watching over me.  As the blog title states, I’m feeling a little bit of survivor’s guilt.  I wish I could help them. But I’m not the person who pays for the shows, and I’m not the person who does the hiring.  If I were, they’d all have jobs.
All I can do is offer my support and try to pass along any leads I hear about.  I truly hope this slowdown ends soon.  I know that eventually it will.  I just hope everyone can survive until the day we’re turning down work because we’re just too busy.  Hang in there!