Yesterday I received something on the order of my usual 30 calendar notifications. These come from various account people and administrative assistants at both the agency and the client and they exist to reserve my time for some meeting they want me at.
Many times these meetings are for later in the day or later in the week. But almost as often, they are for events a month or so in advance. If I paid attention to them all, I'd never be allowed a day off or a vacation. All my days (that sounds like a soap opera) are spoken for.
Two weeks ago I finished shooting on the west coast. Because of the layers and layers of approval at the client we have an annoyingly lengthy approval process. And because their schedules must be scheduled weeks in advance we now have dates on our calendars from here to eternity. I received a meeting invite yesterday for a month hence announcing picture lock.
I haven't even seen picture yet and we have a meeting set up for picture lock.
Picture lock before picture look.
We have a meeting set up for first review.
Second review.
Fifth review.
Third review of seventh review.
What we've done is bureaucratize everything.
Process is what matters.
Process, procedure, protocol, proctology.
I just want to cut the spots.
3 comments:
E pluribus nada.
I've learned to decline meetings that are either poorly described or entirely unnecessary. It's liberating.
"Let's discuss the feedback from last week's feedback session"
Decline without comments.
"Meeting"
Decline without comments.
Try it. It's fun.
I guess I'm lucky. Never working for a big agency, I've enjoyed the freedom to write the spot, hire the talent (usually with feedback), hire the film company, shoot the spot, edit the spot, choose the music (without client input, thank you very much), hand the spot to the client on DVD and be done with it. Thankfully, I've always hit it out of the park (knock on wood). I can't imagine going through what you go through...
The fourth review has been postponed.
However this will have no impact on the fifth and will be rescheduled for a later date after the 7th review.
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