We are living in a Virtual World, And I am a Virtual Girl (Part 1) by Jess Burgess
Two years ago, if you had told me virtual reality would save my career, I would have laughed you off your bar stool. Little did I know the biggest shifts in my life were just around the corner, the least of which would be giving up my well-worn seat at the bar.
As I’m writing this, it’s the age of the Great Resignation: the pundits on CNN clutch their pearls at the “labor shortage” (read: worker revolt), Gen Z is calling out of work for period cramps, Starbucks employees are unionizing, a controversial deal was struck to avert an IATSE strike, and details from the Rust disaster are still coming out. And I am only weeks on the other side of the most stingy, manipulative, and demeaning job I have ever had the misfortune of working. Which is saying something — I worked for Vice for 3 years.
We filmmakers continue to inhabit an amorphous space among workers. In our trade, I know almost as many small business owners as unionized crafts people, as many freelancers as corporate jockeys, as many artists as accountants. In short, we represent a very accurate cross section of the general American working public. My experience over the past year has led me to some unsettling questions the future of our craft.
First, let’s go back in time. I’ll spare you the lengthy retelling of 2020, not only because I’ve written about my personal journey at length here, but also because I believe nothing of real value can be said about a humanity-wide disaster in less than 11 months -- unless you are Bo Burnham -- which I am not.
It’s enough to say that I started my production company, Little Animals Pictures, in January 2020 with my partner. We were ready to take on the world after producing a shoe commercial featuring an NBA star. Next up, we were preparing to head to SXSW to premiere a feature I had produced, followed by a teaching job slated at my alma mater, NYU. On the eve of my thirties, everything was finally falling into place, and then the funniest thing happened.
For me, like most film industry professionals, and humans living on the planet, 2020 sucked. I worked a total of eight calendar days after the pandemic hit. By Christmas, I had moved past the denial phase (“Maybe I can just be a Covid Compliance Officer?”), past the anger phase (“I can blame Jeff Bezos for this”), past the bargaining and depression stages. The truth had set in: if I was going to make it through the pandemic, I would need to sacrifice my pride about what kind of work I would do.
Then, lo and behold, hope arrived at Christmas in the form of an email. A very big client was looking for a production company in the Tri-State area to shoot “virtual tours” in the northeast. Despite having exactly zero experience in virtual reality, I applied. The interview was one of those rare meetings where you feel genuinely connected to the company, the cause, the employees. Two months later, we signed a twelve-month contract.
It’s at this point that I should mention, being the sterling example of a Millennial that I am, I have never held a traditional office job – never had a 401K, never done the daily commute, never required to Slack or Trello or had a daily stand-up. For all my twenties, I gig-jumped, “permalanced,” double-dipped (a clever, painfully accurate term for working two jobs at the same time), and hustled with reckless abandon. Healthcare be damned; I was pursuing my passion and paying the price to be an artist.
But when corporate inevitably called, I slipped into that warm bath of easy money with glee. Compared to commercial shoots where 16-hour days were assumed – if not celebrated – a post at my computer for a few hours a day was a dream. The work itself was simple: a team of three travels to a college, they shoot 360° photos and videos, edit them, input them into the system, then travel back home. Shoot hours are office hours. Your immediate reports are a college admissions team – a class of people who, by the simple definition of their jobs, are required to be welcoming and kind. The worst curveball you could expect is an Airbnb host catfishing you.
After a few weeks of doing these jobs, I wondered why I’d never thought to sell out before. After a few months, I had my answer.
Read the second half of Jess’s blog on Wed, Dec. 15, 2021.
JESS BURGESS
Writer, Producer, Director
A recovering agency producer, turned writer/director/caterer. Grew up as a southern-gothic belle dreaming of making big, bizarre, imaginative films.