'Bred Crumbs
05.20.04
Really Remote Control
11:32 PMI've been helping a friend with a video project for a nonprofit group whose numerous efforts include confronting corporate irresponsibility. My share of the project was coming up with a good graphic look for the piece. Whereas I'm usually not satisfied with my work, I was proud of what I came up with: a color palette that subtly fit the theme and the footage, elegant typography, subtle details to give things a little polish.
So of course, it's all been rejected, not because it's necessarily bad, but because the graphics don't meet the group's honchos' requirements. Which, up to now, they had completely failed to detail or even mention.
My friend is running headfirst into similar brick walls in getting her editing approved. Today, she met with her contact for the group, who nixed one thing after another. Dealing with such control-freakery inevitably leads a reasonable person to the question: So what the hell do you want?
"You decide," said the contact. "You're the filmmaker."
I really would like to strangle this coward on both our behalves.
I had a boss like this once: she vetoed and even ridiculed idea after idea, but she wouldn't ever contribute an idea or tell you what she really wanted to do. You were supposed to prove your worth by reading her mind. Instead, before long, I quit putting much effort into anything.
So it is now. It burns me not just that I have to throw away all of my good work and start over, but that I have to spend more time (when I thought I was pretty much done) just crapping out something and hoping these bureaucrats don't have more requirements hidden up their vice-grip rectums. It's not that I can't handle being just a PhotoShop grunt; had that been the job description going in, I still would have done it, to help my friend out. It's that these clowns say they want something good, then conspire to prevent it. They're pretending to want our contributions and to empower us, but really they just someone to run their cookie-cutter for them. How very ... corporate.
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