THOSE FOLKS BEHIND THE SCENES

In the corporate industry, there are the folks that make things work. These are the ones I deal with when I go to do voice-over stuff. The ones that represent the client, the ones who come to listen to my take on their commercial or what-have-you.

These are the folks behind the scenes.

And they're not like the folks behind the scenes on a feature film. No no. These are corporate folks.

And yet, they're not at ALL like how you may picture "corporate folks."

When I did my voice-over yesterday, the client was seated in the sound studio watching the proceedings with me in the sound booth, and the studio folks running the soundboard in the studio itself.

From my vantage point under glass with headphones on, I couldn't tell the difference between the sound studio guys -- with their jeans, casual t-shirt-and-flannel, with adorning baseball caps-- and the client, with relaxed, long untucked shirts, comfy Old Navy jeans, and (in the case of the woman) "easy-fit" skirt, Haggar buttondown shirt (also untucked) and relaxed calf-high boots with platform heels.

A far cry from the Uptightitude which seems so often to be the hallmark of the Downtown Suit world.

Perhaps it's because they're in the Creative department: the people responsible for coming up with the ads and making sure they're done right. My impression is that those people all seem to be young and hip, as if they were deliberately selected from the Calgary Marketing School of Urban Hip Groove.

In any case, it really put me at my ease. It made me feel like we were all one team, sharing our Starbucks coffee (yes, they actually made a Starbucks run-- the catered coffee in the staff room wasn't GOOD enough) and being hip and trendy together while everyone else worked in cubicles.

As I said in my magic mornings entry, there's definitely a feeling of Getting Away With Something in this business. I'm not saying everyone doesn't work hard-- but they work hard for THEMSELVES, it seems, rather than The Man. No cubicles-- well, except the sound booth itself-- no fluorescents. And hey, the office and studio are completely Macintosh based. What says "relaxed, creative atmosphere" more than a proliferation of Macs?

And sure, you'd expect that from the TALENT-- we're all supposed to be flaky, weird, screw-your-workaday-WORLD-maaaan types. But these are the people that set all that up and make it happen.

And they're pretty cool too.

M

Posted by Agent M at October 09, 2003 11:17 PM