Balancing Work And
Family Life

Family life, or the lack of it, has been a big issue for members of our Guild, writes Joanne D'Antonio. We now have an open committee dedicated to help each other create opportunities to retrieve this precious element in our lives. We realize situations are individual - however, sometimes another person's solution can work for us. With that in mind, the Family Life Committee has decided to print some of the ideas our members have tried. We are sharing these stories in writing so that, if you want to try a similar approach, you have evidence of at least one person's success to show producers, directors, executives, post supervisors or whomever you need to convince.

We invite you to tell us if you found a way, even temporarily, to create more family time while you continue to work. We will feature this information in each issue of the Newsletter - as long as we have participants. You are also invited to come to our Family Life Committee brainstorming meetings. You may reach me via email or (213) 469-0988 to be notified of the meeting schedule or talk about a possible contribution to this column.

Editor Skip Schoolnik Shares His Story

In the summer of 1992 I became a single dad with two somewhat shell-shocked children, aged eight and twelve, to care for. I had been alternating between editing long-form television on film and on a tape-based Montage editing system- I had run my course on the Montage. It had the same problems that it had always had, and I was fed up with it, and the company's promises to fix the unfixable that never seemed to materialize. With the kind of schedules I had been having, working on film was not as viable an alternative as it had once been.

In March of that year, Steve Cohen and Larry Jordan had been working next door to me on an Avid. I am not particularly technical nor computer literate, but Steve enticed me to check it out, and while there were still bugs. it definitely seemed like a way to go. So when the summer came around and I went back to work after a few, self-imposed, months of unemployment and rearranging my life, I told the producer and director, with whom I had no prior relationship, that I wanted to work at home and on an Avid. They were both at ease with the idea. The picture was for a company whose head of business affairs was more than a little skeptical, but when he realized that I lived in a "safe" neighborhood, and that in fact, it would cost him no more money than if I worked at a more traditional location, he approved of the plan.

I believe that most productions benefit from my working at home.

A number of factors came into play to have made this workable. I live in a nice location. I have a large and comfortable office which converted easily to an editing space. The Avid is a very portable system. There are multiple portable phones, a dedicated fax line, a computer, and a view of the Pacific. And, in retrospect, most importantly, it was a TV movie and I was the sole editor. In my experience, with most tv movies the only person the editor spends much time with is his, or her, assistant and the director. The producers are seldom around the editing room for more than a few days, and usually not that much, as most screenings can be held at their offices, or wherever they deem most appropriate. It was a sensible and profitable, artistically as well as financially, way to go.

I believe that most productions benefit from my working at home. The cost is comparable. It is a more humanistic atmosphere. Life surrounds me, I don't just stay in a vacuum where there are little but the celluloid, or digital, images as it were, to influence my decisions. Most of the directors, and producers for that matter, I have worked with prefer to work in a more comfortable environment than most traditional editing rooms have to offer, as do I. One cannot discount the influence the comfort factor plays in the final cut. While I cannot in truth tell you that all the pictures I have cut at home are better than ones I have cut elsewhere, I can tell you it was a heck of a lot more fun for myself, my assistants and the directors, and made the process that much more enjoyable and, ultimately, had a positive effect on the final pictures.

My children were also big winners. It was not so much that they needed my direct attention, but rather that they knew I was close by. They had access to me if they needed it, and that went a long way toward allowing them to carry on with the confidence and stability of children who are fortunate enough to have at least one parent there for them the majority of the time. It relieved a lot of pressure for me as well. It's not as if I still don't need to have childcare. I don't believe one can oversee an editing room on a full time basis and two children, simultaneously, for any length of time and do justice to both, but it does allow me to stay in close proximity and to keep a finger on what is going on in their lives on a daily basis. It also allowed me to take liberties with my working hours, at least until the first cut was completed. If I had to take care of something that pertained to the children that could only be done during the day, it became easy to accomplish, as I could always make up the time in the evening or on a weekend - at no cost to the production.

The shift to working in my home made a lot of parental problems disappear. My days are long, and there is no question that I am always time challenged. My circle of life is often home, school, and back. But1 I am able to take care of everything that needs my attention, be a present father to my children, and still pay proper respect to my work. The children didn't ask to be born and we, as parents, must remember to keep our priorities in order. Speaking solely for myself, they have to be number one. They deserve it. They are our future, and the future of the world as we know it. We have to provide for them now, emotionally as well as materially. Everything else pales in comparison.