Typically I work Monday to Friday from 9-5, working from home for three days and in the office for two. Playback Magazine has a daily newsletter that goes out before lunchtime, so the mornings are usually pretty quiet for me while my coworkers work on it. If it’s a particularly busy news day, I will also be asked to write for it, but generally I use this time to work on independent projects and research, preparing to send drafts to the editor.
After the newsletter publication and lunch, I chat with my boss who gives me comments on my drafts or sends some additional research material. I continue to work on refining my work through the afternoon. Oftentimes, she will give me pieces to work on for the next day’s newsletter as well.
Through my work on shorter, daily articles, I’ve been able to learn about different film initiatives Canada has, such as the Disability Screen Office and programs that help early-career BIPOC filmmakers make their first feature film.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Canada’s relationship to their indigenous population is very different than in the U.S., and the colonial history is talked about a lot more. I have been wondering if some of the programs and initiatives are unique to Canada, or if there are equivalents in the States. I’ve gotten to learn about the resources here through writing a feature on language revitalization efforts, but Indigenous filmmaking in America is definitely a blindspot of mine.
Similarly, the feature I’m working on right now is about a topic I didn’t know much about before–co-productions, specifically between Canada and Singapore. In general, there are a lot of different collaborations between countries, on everything from feature films to children’s programs. A lot of politics goes into producing them, such as drawing up the contracts, what countries are best to work with, etc. Knowledge of how the production of these films work is something I definitely want to take into my study of film at Columbia and beyond.