Senseless Salaries - 'Never Give Up'

I am at a point in my life where I have been using my foothold to grab only the opportunities that I want and there's been much to get involved with.

There'll always be the odd knock-back in life but hey you just keep going don't you & don't listen to the losers out there who tell you there's nothing out there, in the end you ask enough questions, you'll find they never bothered trying.

I immersed myself into learning much more than writing... I can produce, direct, shoot and edit films but more so - I get off my ass and plug in with chasing down the opportunities out there or simply make my own.

This year alone I have just finished my first web series episode, my name on two new short films, found and joined two new powerful film-makers social media sites 'Talent Manager' & 'Stage 32 ' (I've already got over 200 international followers). In addition, I've applied to work offers with 'Latimer', the 'BBC Writers Room', 'Disney', 'Evolution Entertainment' as well as with 'Zoom' - a deaf community production team with 'Film4' shortlisting one of the projects I had wrote a treatment for, called 'Immutable.' Most recently I have been considered by 'Lionshead Studios (Microsoft)' the guys responsible for the creation of 'FABLE.'


The translation of scriptwriter in film is translated as 'Narrative Designer' in the gaming industry, being as I've been a gamer longer than I have a film-maker, it was quite a rush to have gotten so far in the process with an international award winning franchise, owned by a worldwide renowned company to come on board as a member of the production team.

I had come through five interview stages to get this far at which point I wasn't happy returning somewhere I'd only just left but considering what I'd get out of the year's placement I was offered, was too great to pass up.

TWO PROBLEMS:

The salary is shit, whoever claims to be able to live comfortably on their own on £16,000 is talking crapp. The Lionshead Studios Office is located in Guildford, so naturally you start looking for simple studios for around £500 per month, failing that you take whatever you can get in the surrounding towns, right?

You know how many results I got on the top five different property estate agents on my 'Google' searches?   - ZERO!!!

So we're now saying that despite all my hard work and getting so far in securing a position, there is absolutely nothing in even a 20 mile radius, DARE I think about how far outward this goes?

However, there's always the back up option of becoming a university lecturer on a full-time scriptwriting course, right? - Provided I don;t laugh in the interview upon my consideration for the job, the two immediate jokes being:
a) It being called full-time
b) It being called a course

I'd love to put up a screenshot of one of the students poorly filled (let alone poorly structured) timetables, show it to a bunch of taxpayers and say; "Look... Other than the government finding new ways to fuck you in the ass on a regular basis, this is what you're money's going into, whilst you work 5 days a week for"

Speaking as formerly being one of those people on £15 - £18k salaries for a big part of my life, need it be said, I'd be pretty pissed off.

You've got to wander how and WHY, WHY, WHHYYYYYY, they should be entitled to £35,000 salaries upwards (not to mention the vice chancellor of Bournemouth University, if I told you that you'd die but it enters six figures) and their moaning strikes when they get the most amount of holidays next to any other industry.

I can't say I respect this system at all, can you?

Let me lay the cards on the table and give you a hypothetical scenario as a storyteller!
On one hand you've got a job offer behind one of Britain's finest game franchise, with an international reach but you have to slug it out in shitholes for X amount of years to get anywhere near a respectable salary (especially if you've done enough of that in your life already).
On the other hand, you've got a job offer as a teacher, where you've got a welcoming salary for a decent home, vehicle, holiday allowance and plenty of money left over to spare, only problem is, it may never be much else.

Whatever your choice, what a shit situation after all that hard work, right?


I leave the assholes in charge a quote from a random picture of a cat I found on Google Images that outlines how a lot of us feel!
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