The Never-Ending Application Part 2

Now that I've spent about sixteen hours on this application, I could use some help and feedback.

I need feedback from three types of people:
1)  Anyone who wants to help -- just let me know if it's readable, if it makes sense, or if there's anything that just sounds bad.
2)  Anyone with mad writing skills -- make sure I'm expressing myself clearly, utilizing the tools of language as effectively as possible.
3)  Anyone with experience reading application essays -- if you were reading these application essays, and had to make the decision whether to move me up through the process or dump me then and there, what would you choose to do?  What parts work in my favor?  What parts work against me?

I'm applying to the Directors Guild of America's Assistant Directors Training Program.  It's extremely prestigious and very competitive.

Thanks in advance!
-Arnon

Here are the "essay questions" they want me to answer:

1A)  Your reasons for wanting to be an Assistant Director Trainee
1B)  Your short and long-term goals in the entertainment industry, 5 years, 10 years
1C)  How you have confronted and overcome adversity (hardship) in your academic and/or work life (be specific: the situation/what you did/the results)
1D)  Experiences that illustrate that you have the potential to be a successful Assistant Director.  Do not feel restricted to traditional criteria such as academic records, work history or organizational involvement.
2)  Personal Accomplishment: Describe the one thing you have accomplished which makes you the most proud.
3)  Organizational Experience:  Demonstrate, with specific examples, the skills you ahve in: organizing people or events; setting and achieving group goals; juggling conflicting priorities; and handling multiple tasks concurrently.  This may be based upon experiences in the workplace, high school, college or activities outside of work or school.  Focus on the role you played in those activities.
4)  Hobbies and Interests:  Describe your interests outside of film/television.
5)  Stress Management:  Describe the details of an experience that demonstrates your ability to work long hours under stressful or demanding circumstances or conditions.

They want no more than a half page for each of these, which is a requirement I've stuck to very closely.  Here's what I wrote:

Assistant Directors Training Program - Applicant Essays

1A:  Your reasons for wanting to be an Assistant Director Trainee

There is no better way to learn than by doing.  I know this as a self-taught filmmaker, and as a teacher.  In the classroom, skills taught in class are either applied immediately or forgotten.  I've hit my autodidactic limits, but I want to learn more, to become an expert at a kind of work that I live for, in an industry that I love.  I won't find that kind of learning in a book, or in a classroom.  As an Assistant Director Trainee, I would learn by doing, by working, by living and breathing the production process.  What's more, I would learn from the experts, Hollywood's infantry of elite professionals who teach the way I need to learn: by doing. 

1B:  Your short and long-term goals in the entertainment industry, 5 years, 10 years

There is no "training program" for my long-term goals.  Even the director's own guild does not provide a path for the aspiring director to follow.  Directing Hollywood-scale films has been my passion and my purpose for almost twenty years, and it may take me twenty more years to get there.  In the absence of a path, I must blaze my own trail, placing myself in the industry niche that suits my temperament and skill set.  I've tried writing, producing, shooting, and even editing, and none of these careers have thrilled me half as much as assistant directing.  I can excel at this, because I love it. In five years, I will be an in-demand professional, worth much more than my salary to my employers.  I'll have steady work on increasingly complex productions.  The ladder will be mine to climb.  As the years go by, I'll do more and learn more.  By the time I'm ten years in, I'll have an arsenal of knowledge, experience and connections.  Perhaps I'll still be an AD, but in ten years, a lot can happen.  Perhaps then, with my dues paid, my career defined, and my network established, I might begin a calculated shift to producing, and from there, to directing.

1C:  How you have confronted and overcome adversity (hardship) in your academic and/or work life?

When I was twenty three years old, I found myself producing and directing a $100k feature in Massachusetts.  The project was very big for a kid just out of college, but I was eager to make a big splash.  Our investors included a German producer who claimed to have valuable industry experience.  He insisted on a contract that granted him a great deal of control.  As the ink dried, the German producer made demands that exploded our budget, and I was contractually obliged to do as he told.  I pleaded with him to scale back on his demands or increase his investment.  His response: "Decide where to find the money."  We were two days out from the start of production.  Soon, I'd be employing people with the knowledge that they wouldn't get paid.  It was the most difficult thing I've ever done to pull the plug on that film.  It was to be my ticket to everything, but it had to die.  Not everyone agrees that this was the right thing to do, but at the time, the choice was clear:  Business or Integrity.  I chose Integrity.

1D:  Experiences that illustrate that you have the potential to be a successful Assistant Director.

There was a time when I lived in Baltimore that I had to juggle several jobs.  My work day began at 4:30am, the opening shift at Starbucks.  The morning coffee rush is like a freight-train of caffeine-starved workaholics, and it sucks baristas dry.  At 1pm, I'd head over to a nearby school, where I taught unruly middle-schoolers how to make spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations.  Later in the afternoon and an hour away, I taught a video course at a community college.  In the midst of all that, I volunteered with a theater company and produced short films.  I didn't especially love all those jobs, but I loved doing the work and keeping it all organized in my head and on my calendar.  Every day was a new challenge of logistics, timing, lesson plans and traffic patterns, and through it all, I had to face customers with a smile, students with patience, and everything else with another cup of coffee.  I think I can handle a film set.

2:  Personal Accomplishment

When I was a student at Brandeis, it did not have a film major.  It barely had any film classes at all.  The school's academic leadership was strongly entrenched in the old view that a "liberal arts" education is not trade school.  They preferred philosophy majors and grumbled when the business school opened its doors.  Film was there, but only barely, as an academic after-thought of the American Studies department.  I ignored all of this.  I made my own movies, and created my own film major, an Independent Interdisciplinary Major in Film Studies.  As a sophomore, I started a campus "film festival", which was mostly just a screening of my own films.  Somehow, that became an annual event, a university-funded showcase of student film from around the world, with celebrity guests, industry insiders, and all the hoopla young filmmakers could hope for.  The academic leadership had to notice. Now there are production classes, equipment for students, even an entire academic department.  And yes, now Brandeis has a film major.  I'm very proud of that.

3:  Organizational Experience

I mentioned in essay #2 the film festival that I founded at Brandeis University.  My work on that festival included all of the organizational and leadership skills that you ask about.  In my junior and senior years, I ran the festival with a committee of students, most of whom were interested in entertainment, but not necessarily passionate about film.  I had to build that team, steer it towards our goals for the festival, and manage the various (and often conflicting) personalities within the group.  As we got closer to the festival dates, I had to delegate and balance the work among the team members, ensuring that everything would get done, and that no one would burn out too soon.  I was a student at the time, and couldn't ignore my academic responsibilities, either.  The festival was a huge success, and remains as an important part of the school's cinema culture.

4:  Hobbies and Interests

Though some may find these hobbies a little out-of-date, I'm very fond of my stamp and coin collections.  I had these collections when I was young, but they were fairly disorganized, mostly just jumbles of stamps or coins, roughly sorted by country.  Those collections gathered dust for a while, until my interest was rekindled several years ago, when I got to see my great uncle's legendary stamp collection.  His albums, arranged by theme, were like encyclopedias, full of notes and clippings about the things the stamps depicted.  I was inspired to re-open my old stamp albums, and, like my great uncle, to use stamps as a way to learn more about the world.  The renewed interest in my old stamps expanded to include coins when I found some old pennies in the register at Starbucks, and both collections took on new meaning for me.  I'm a more thorough and diligent collector now, sorting stamps thematically, and coins by type, year and mint mark.  It's a soothing hobby, a reminder that when life is at its most chaotic, everything has its place, patience and persistence will put it all back in order.

5:  Stress Management

There's something magical about being the last person to leave a set, especially after a long day.  Everything is quiet and clean.  The memories of a stressful day don't stay with a place after the production leaves.  I find that comforting, a reminder that we, too, can let things settle back to a quiet, orderly place.  I am very particular about creating order, even in the most chaotic mess.  I directed a short film once, the cast and crew were obviously tired.  I called "nap time", and found a quiet corner where I could shut my eyes.  Everyone thought I was nuts, but ten minutes later, we were back to work, completely re-energized. It's the discipline of the Sabbath:  It's not a day of rest unless you have the willpower to rest on that day.  So, too, with breaks on the set, and with that wonderful quiet time at the end of the day: the calm is there, you just have to claim it.