Things are getting very busy around here. Now that my wife and I have our first child, the natural drive to work hard is taking over. It feels like I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. I’m up early, at the office working with the interns, off to a client’s office, home for lunch, to my office or the client’s again in the afternoon. Some days we’re shooting from 7 in the morning until 7 at night. Even with long schedules, I have to start earlier and finish later than anyone. Sometimes I put in 14, 15, or 16 hours in a day, and I don’t get overtime. The newest new thing that’s keeping me busy: travel jobs.
Last Thursday was my first long-distance travel job, it was also my first gig directing a TV commercial. Envision Response (www.envisiontv.com) sent me on a trip to Arizona, to a suburb of Phoenix called Goodyear, where my team and I filmed the latest commercial for Brainetics (www.brainetics.com). Brainetics is the breakthrough math and memory system from math genius Mike Byster. You may have seen the earlier commercials on the air, and you will probably see this new stuff in all the same places come end of summer. This week I was in Illinois, shooting more Brainetics material in a Chicago suburb named Naperville.
Of course, I have always known that I can direct moving pictures. I directed plenty of short film and video projects as a student. This experience was different because it was the first time someone actually paid me money to direct a shoot for a national TV commercial. This work that I did will be broadcast all over the country, maybe even in international markets.
Nicholas John Nakis 