Freelancing: The Jazz of Jobs
It’s Saturday night and I’m in the garage of a man I hardly know. Let me take that again — I’m in the garage of a man’s parents I hardly know. I’m here because this person I met online says he’ll pay me for my services. Currently, I am alone with a camera that’s pointed at a black bedsheet while he’s inside the house changing out of a skin-tight thermal and into a suit. I sure hope it isn’t his birthday.
Independent contractor, self-employed, freelancer, schmuck: I am one of these things most days of the week. So long as I’m paid, I have no qualms about wearing funny hats. My remote nine-to-five out of Ohio is barely enough for me to live comfortably in Washington, so I pick up camera work whenever I can: the very reason I am negating my Saturday standing in a strange man’s garage.
On the way here, I had an epiphany listening to KNKX 88.5 out of Seattle. KNKX is the NPR affiliate station that plays instrumental jazz when not speaking the truth. As I whistle along and keep the beat on the steering wheel, I decide that I am basically a jazz musician; not because my taps are in the pocket, but because I’m an improviser: my job as a freelancer is the embodiment of jazz. I have no idea what I’m doing next, but I aim to stay in key by putting my hands in roughly the right position.
I time the drive perfectly and arrive at 5:45. I ring the doorbell and an older woman with salt-and-pepper mane answers. “Is Rodney home?” I ask as if I want Rodney to come out to play. She is his mother. I get the sense that she’s exasperated by having her forty-eight-year-old son hire random young men to film him in their garage.
“It’s cold out there,” she says, though I’m the one outdoors. I tell her I’m from Ohio which translates to the cold don’t bother me none. She still somehow invites me inside.
Rodney is in full makeup, manically buzzing around with powdered cheeks, waxed eyebrows, and crimson lipstick. He looks like a colorized Grandpa Munster. There is a noticeable difference between stage and film makeup; Rodney doesn’t seem to realize this. We are filming a quick headshot, but the makeup gives the vibe that we’re putting on a production of Cabaret.
Tonight marks the sixth job I’ve taken on from Rodney. Every time we meet, he’s worn tie-dyed Crocs as if no one else got the memo that they’ve never gone out of style. “I want to get insulated Crocs,” he confides. “These aren’t cutting the wind.” He opts for jet-black Sketchers and we head out to the garage.
I’ve taken on most jobs with reckless abandon. I never know going in if I’m able to pull it off, but I’m in no financial position to turn anything down. I make everything up as I go. As a one-man band, a little tenacity can make mistakes sound purposeful. One sour note isn’t enough to ruin a composition. It’s not until you build a career on sour notes that people recognize that you actually suck at music.
Rodney once offered me $45 an hour to create thirty seconds of motion graphics for his website. Not fully aware of what was required of me, I accepted on the basis that I’d never been paid $45 to do anything before. But after I committed, I realized I had made a mistake: I had no idea how to do what he wanted.
Cue the long, drawn-out clarinet solo. Blow, fatty!
The motion graphic work I’d done up to that point involved dragging pre-keyed dissolve transitions onto the ends of video clips. The project hardly differed from anything I’d taken on before, so I figured I’d learn this one on the job, too. But as a video editor, I can only work as fast as my computer’s processor, and my dainty Hewlett-Packard wasn’t quite up to it.
This proved to be the first freelance gig that blew up in my face. I gracefully bowed out of the project and he outsourced the work to the Philippines. I ended up being the one in clown cosmetics.
So why, then, am I — once again — standing in this strange man’s garage? Has he not deduced that I’m a fraud? Maybe he’s just paying me to hang out with him. Though he’ll call it consulting. Regardless, $45 is pretty steep for my company alone.
Rodney’s been inside the house for fifteen minutes ($11.25) and during his absence, I’ve had time to snoop around his dad’s workbench. This is the area of a particular, systematic man; he’s just shy of organizing cardboard by grade. The pegboard is pristine. The tools look like they’ve never been used as tools, but rather as elements in a panorama display at a handyman exhibit. My dad’s tools always came swathed with patina. Seeing this level of organization and cleanliness makes me shiver.
On top of a cabinet, I’ve sniffed out what appears to be a security camera. I’m naturally interested since 1) I like cameras, and 2) I like to know if I’m being watched. Sure enough, it is a camera and I am undoubtedly being watched. Rodney’s probably in the control room now reviewing the monitors like a mall cop, checking the status of the chocolate-dusted almonds he left out as bait.
My dad says that I don’t see the negative in the world and that I’m too trusting of people. Why, then, am I — at least momentarily — convinced that those almonds are poisonous? I balance the outcome books all day long and hinge every decision I make on the numbers I crunch. To think that I — a death-fearing hypochondriac — would put myself in a dangerous situation is absurd. I viciously play out the scenarios and determine that the pros of eating the almonds outweigh the cons of eating the almonds. I wonder how many people are being paid to stand in a garage and contemplate the repercussions of chocolate-dusted nuts right now.
Stop blowing that clarinet, Fatty! That was nasty!
My status as a freelancer is not only jazz-adjacent but equivalent to the phrase “please sir, may I have some more?” I’m always going a little hungry. I initially do more for less to give the illusion that I am a valuable asset, thus granting me future prospects with a client. Savviness is a requisite since I don’t possess any real skills; I pretend until I do. As late, non-jazz musician Bill Hicks said to a heckler: I’m improvising this shit, dude.
I will work pro bono if I foresee benefits: more eyes mean more opportunities. This opens the realm of possibilities, but it is dangerous. Word of your charity can spread fast, and before you know it you’ve done a free music video for every band in town. You can only get paid in t-shirts for so long.
Rodney finally comes out in a tie and overcoat, and thankfully other clothing, too. He makes no mention of the bag of almonds I have in my hands. I’m officially on the clock.
He sits on the stool in front of the bedsheet. I set up two hair lights at forty-five degrees behind his head and turn on the main LED with its snug optical snoot. I focus the lens on his eye-line and start to roll at one hundred and twenty frames per second: perhaps overkill for a man just sitting. I pivot the directional light across his face upwards of fifteen times, like an extraterrestrial scanner, as he makes various — and questionable — facial decisions. We review the footage. I tap my foot to what I believe to be the beat of slow motion. He crosses his arms in a way that reads that’s cute, but now let’s do it my way.
The issue is that his way involves tying one end of a rope to a free-standing shelf and then tying the other end to the light. He believes that if the rope is taught, the light stand — which is on wheels — will travel in a perfect semi-circle and imitate the motion of a motorized track that costs thousands of dollars. It’s an ingenious rig, but I assure you it’s sketchy beyond belief. It’d be hypocritical of me to go against an improvisation, so I don’t. Yes, and… yes, and…
“It sounds good in theory,” I say. I have my reservations, but I’m not above the idea. We reshoot the headshot using his bonkers, utilitarian method. He expresses how much he loves the new footage by saying we should’ve done it his way from the start.
“I’ve learned to deal with creative types,” Rodney says. “You ask them to do something one way and they say ‘sure, we can do that!’ Then they suggest an entirely different way and never end up doing the thing you want. So you should always do your way first.”
Ironic, since we didn’t. Though he makes certain to let me know he’s speaking in a general way, I am one of those creative types he’s referring to. I have learned to deal with analytical types, myself. What I do is willingly concede to their preconceived ideas and take the momentary ego hit to let them think they’re right even though I know they’re aesthetically wrong. I’m speaking, of course, in a general way.
That said, I’m mortified that his scrappy engineering worked and astonished that it didn’t bring down a shelf. But had I not gone along with Rodney’s rope contraption improvisation, I wouldn’t have otherwise ventured into that weird territory. Music, man.
After four hours for four seconds of footage, I pack my equipment and get back in the car. Onto the next gig. I blare KNKX on the drive home. The sax-blowing, piano-plunking jazz is not all that different from what I just got done doing inside a strange man’s garage. I tap along happily, unaware of the corrupted footage in my camera or the COVID I just picked up, enjoying what Saturday I have left, knowing I’ll get paid in a month and that I am a counterfeit Charles Mingus amongst freelancers.
