Today we’d like to introduce you to Blake.
Blake, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started in my youth studying music but never had the right outlet, so it dropped. But then, while in college, I fell into film and found my craft. But right when I graduated, the industry was going through big changes which brought uncertainty and that path lost viability. It was disappointing but I kept brainstorming and logging all the new ideas while working for an audio/video dealer and TV systems design firm. After a few years I transitioned back into production with a local company as engineer-in-charge (EIC). The job was managing production and transmission systems on TV production trucks.
After several years of that, I got the opportunity to work for the NBA, engineering on live broadcasts which was a great gig. I never expected to split my time between the original dream of storytelling and something seemingly paradoxical like engineering, but in hindsight I believe that I gravitated to this second path because of my creative aptitudes, not in spite of them. It opened my eyes and helped me mature as a professional. Since then, I’ve noticed that even in Hollywood, the city of dreams, other professionals advise that you should have goals, not dreams. So it’s funny how dreams/goals shift over time. The TV work has been very rewarding for many reasons but mainly it offers a level of prosperity that is sometimes hard to come by in the art world.
While I have had longer stints of stability, in the world of freelance things are always unpredictable. No matter which way you cut it, the path to success is a winding one. Predicting exactly when the ground is going to shift under your feet is impossible. Fortunately there is one constant, that helps: The key to success is determination with a strong work ethic.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been a smooth road. The first eye-opener was the college senior thesis project. I ran into a former classmate from the advertising school (my first major). She mentioned that all the students who kept going in the media planning track had already gotten internships at GSD&M ad agency. GSD&M was known as the hottest maverick ad agency in the USA at the time. So, students from the program that I had abandoned were pretty much set and I was about to launch off on a production that would test my mettle and put me deeply into debt.
After I completed that final class, I had to get a regular job because Hollywood will not come knocking just because you went to film school. It was a very small company with few resources, so I was on my own learning the ropes of the systems integration industry. The thinking was that I’d make a million dollars in commissions as a systems designer & project manager, put that money into my production company, then go back to making TV and films. While it could have happened, it was a long shot. I gave it a good five year run but there was too much I didn’t know, so the million dollar payout never came and I found myself unemployed. At that point I was dependent on rental income from boarders while I worked on completing my production/post-production studio that I was building in a bonus room in my house.
This was during the financial crisis of 2008. After 10 months of unemployment, I found freelance work with the next company as EIC, but had to learn the ropes of live-event production and that took some time. Within a year I became the lead field engineer on UT sporting events. But it didn’t come quickly enough to save the house which was my nest egg. I thought Wells Fargo would give me a loan modification as they kept saying they wanted to do, but it was more profitable for them to just take the house due to the positive equity. I sued the bank but my lawyers did a lousy job. One of them actually took about $5,000, disappeared and refused to return my calls. Plus banks were too-big-too-fail, and during the crisis Texas eliminated consumer protection regulations that were needed to hold banks accountable at the state level. I lost the house, the studio, and I was completely broke with no assets.
I had to couch-surf for a while and then got an apartment in low income housing. While rebuilding, I got the opportunity to work for the NBA on a new project when they created a centralized replay center that would become the central hub for transmission on all game signals for all markets. I was one of the engineers that helped them create the workflow to provide that service. I’m grateful for the opportunity because in engineering you’re largely invisible, but after 12 years, I was recognized as being top 97th percentile of all NBA field engineers in 2019. Then the ground shifted unexpectedly when another company took ownership of the role and I was unemployed… again. Soon after, news stories started flooding the trades about how cable & linear TV had officially died and good employment opportunities became sparse. I’ve been unemployed now for over 1 1/2 years.
Fortunately, after much searching, reinventing, continuing education and interviewing, I on-boarded with an up-and-comer doing VR production and they have rights contracts with most of the pro sports leagues as well as NCAA. So I’ll be back in the game soon with TV engineering. The takeaway there is that a lot can go wrong despite all your best efforts. You try to stay positive but that much time without work is a harsh reality. Financial issues aside, what really smarts is that you know you’ve earned seniority. There’s a mentality that you’ve proven yourself, working so hard for so long, putting your best self out there.
On the film side, it’s just a typical struggle of entrepreneurial endeavors. You work to produce your projects and then have to do all the marketing and distribution yourself until you earn enough recognition to build interest from producers and distributors. It really taxes all of your resources. I used to have the attitude that, “If you make it, they will program” (the festivals). But I’ve since found out that there’s a lot of marketing and networking involved, lots of outreach and even some politics. Now, I’m trying to figure out where I fit in on the festival circuit because traditional thinking was that you have to go through the circuit to be recognized and get your work out there, but some experts are saying that the system is broken. As a result, those in the know are transitioning to a strategy called “hybrid distribution”, which is yet another thing to learn and develop.
And then there’s the never-ending struggle to keep up with ever-changing best practices which today means digital marketing, web development, and distribution platforms but tomorrow will mean something else. The democratization of film is a double edged sword. When I was in college not too long ago, these things were not even an option. The idea of a solo-preneur just didn’t exist. It’s empowering, but also new territory that’s actively evolving. You can’t rest because you have to evolve along with it or be left behind.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’ve spent the last 20 years in A/V and TV systems integration, most of that working in sports broadcasting. I specialize in production and transmission systems. The title is Engineer-In-Charge and also Technical Manager. The role is troubleshooting systems during high-pressure live events and coordinating the needs of different stakeholders so that everyone gets what they need for the show.
Like most technical mangers in the TV business, I’m known for being able to handle the pressure and roll with the demands of live events. It means being able to think about workflows under pressure and communicate well with other team members for the purpose of solving problems quickly. I’ve done over 1000 live shows as the only engineer on site and never had a major malfunction that was not fixed in time. There have been a few close-calls, but the team has always pulled together to make it work and give the fans a great experience.
I think that creativity and engineering go hand-in-hand because to solve problems quickly, that’s a creative process. I’ve known other engineers who also work as creators, whether it’s music, film, YouTube, etc. Some think that the two disciplines are mutually exclusive, but I disagree. And, creativity aside, the film sequence was no spectator sport. It gave me that determination and good work ethic that’s needed to do pro-level live-events. Because of the experience, I know what it looks like to take on a big challenge, how to deal with everything constantly changing, how to overcome adversity. Film was instrumental in my professional development which translated into opportunities with the NBA offered to only one or two others.
As a creator, I look for ways to leverage the many years of TV tech work on my resume. That means consultation/collaboration, but I also have production ideas ready to push forward when my current independent projects finish their run.
I have a narrative short that we’re putting into the festival circuit now. My next indie project is a feature doc about artists. Documentary is a way to tell stories in collaboration with others and do it without a ton of up-front expense. The idea is to get together a proof-of-concept, then bring that into a pitch, secure co-production funding and partners to help move it forward.
If your readers would like to follow along, the website has a sign-up for my newsletter about the artists journey/project status. The movie poster QR code takes you to a free membership signup to the website where you can access archived content.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
As a kid, I lived on the outskirts of a suburban neighborhood in Tyler, TX. Back then the city had a reputation as just a simple and affordable family town. In those days there wasn’t too much trouble kids could get into. Nor were there any pesky neighborhood association reps patrolling the streets looking for infractions.
I had several friends my age within biking distance. Our homemaker moms would let us go out without any supervision until dark, so we had quite a bit of freedom (Their leniency had its limits though. Certain activities did require discretion). The summer before fifth grade my friends and I decided to build a tree-house in a big oak tree on a nearby abandoned lot. With regards to design and construction methods, we didn’t even consult the internet much less our parents (no parents because of the need for discretion, no internet because there was no internet). We just took what we had and got moving: a hammer, a box of nails, our collective imagination and a big leftover roll of carpet that had been sitting in my friend Ryan’s garage for like a year.
At the beginning of the summer we set about building our open-roofed, carpet tree-house. We commandeered a tug-of-war rope and an old abandoned mattress for easy ingress/egress. The tree was on a hill, so of course we laid the mattress on the steepest side, exposed springs facing the sky to confuse or ward off unauthorized users. To exit the tree-house, a club member would jump out, assuming the stop-drop-and-roll position in mid-air (something grown-ups used to teach children in case we one day inexplicably erupted in flames. They didn’t give an explanation of how this could happen, but my Looney-Tunes saturated brain settled on spontaneous combustion as the most probable theory). It was necessary to dodge the rusty metal springs protruding from the holes in the mattress upon landing, then exact a cat-like re-positioning of the body, facilitating a bounce-launch in the direction of the grassy hill with a shoulder-first touch-down, and smooth transition into a downhill roll to bleed off the energy. Doing a flip after the bounce was optional. After spending plenty of time to perfect the stop-drop-bounce-flip-roll, we decided to finish out the Green Acres neighborhood fortress by hollowing out a nearby row of double hedges so we could have a camouflaged ground-level meeting room. That’s the magic of youth.
Once our moms found out about it, they started discouraging us from playing there (and for some reason I got an extra round of shots halfway through the summer vacation). We hung out there for the rest of the summer, until one day… We rode our bikes to the magic carpet fort. Low-and-behold, it had been torn down. “Who is responsible for this insolence!?” we demanded. Upon bringing news of the clandestine attack on our sovereign land, legally claimed via squatter’s rights, the moms informed us that the landowner (another mom, probably), who was from Dallas (How convenient. Too far away for travel by bike to discuss a resolution to the property rights infringements) had stopped by to notify the neighborhood that the building project had not gotten the proper authorization and had to go.
Ah well. It was good while it lasted.
Pricing:
- The website will have content such as short films, blog stories, podcasts, etc. It will be a standard tiered pricing menu with a free tier and a discount for annual members on the premium tiers. Followers can sign-up now for the free tier, then when we launch the premium content they can choose to upgrade their subscription There will be a lot of free content to check out such as following our path to finish our current film and get it into the festival circuit. Voyage Austin readers can use the QR code on the poster image to sign up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thelandfilms.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelandfilms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheLandShortFilm
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakenaleid/
Image Credits
BBNMainPhoto.jpg – Amanda Leigh
Film4.jpg – Aaron Marshall
