“Initializing…" - From Hardships to New Foundations pt. 1

 Hello everyone,

This is the beginning of my fairly frequent blog posts. As a small introduction, my name is Nick Archuleta (you can call me Nick Arch for short). I am currently in the process of switching careers into the wild world of tech! Having originally obtained a degree in Film and Digital Media from the University of New Mexico, and having pursued (and ultimately falling short of) many of my long-time dreams that I’ve had since I was a kid, I am now in a position in life to where I'm looking to move forward with life and pursue something that holds a lot of value and familiarity to me. 

    Ever since I was a very young child, no other medium has spoken to me in the ways that technology has. A lot of my early memories involve me staying with my grandparents and playing numerous Hot Wheels and Blue’s Clues video games on their Compaq Windows 95 PC. I was always drawn to computers. My earliest computer classes in kindergarten - 2nd grade were amongst my favorite classes in school. I often found myself getting lost in the use of this electronic world. I would also be remised to not mention the world of video game consoles, the ever-evolving digital Rubik's cubes for adolescence in the 21st century. I remember spending several hours playing Super Mario 64, Rayman 2, Super Smash Bros, and Madden 2000 on my dad’s Nintendo 64. One of the earliest gifts I received that I can remember was my very own Nintendo 64 from my mother. I had also gotten a copy of Donkey Kong 64 and Yoshi’s Story, two games I have such distinct and fond memories of. As I grew older, my gaming habit grew along with me. I remember phases of my life defined by my playing and never-ending enjoyment of systems such as the Playstation 2, Playstation 3, various Nintendo handhelds, and the Nintendo Wii. 

    As time went on, I also developed a fascination with working on a personal computer. I was able to get my  very own PC when I was around 9 or 10. It was a Dell Dimension 2400. I would spend countless hours playing Backyard Baseball, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, and playing around with Microsoft Paint. Around early 2008, I was so very fortunate enough to be an early adopter of this apparently new "revolutionary" device that was supposed to allegedly change the landscape of tech forever. It was a device known as an iPhone. It was something that added fuel to an already blazing inferno.  As I grew older, I would turn to tech to unleash a more creative side. I got my first MacBook Pro in early High School, and would use it for making YouTube videos in iMovie and Final Cut Express, playing around with iWeb (little did I know...), and trying to play musician in Garageband. I was pretty addicted to what I could do with tech to the point where I saw myself sitting for hours doing video (and hopefully film) editing as a profession. When I got old enough, and was somehow able to keep my grades consistent enough, 

    I went to UNM to pursue studies in Film through UNM's then "Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media" program. I met a lot of incredibly talented people, and found myself in heaven being able to utilize my creative side in a full-time academic environment. I would enjoy all the classes that focused pretty heavily on allowing me to flex my video editing experience, and learning new cinematic skills I hadn't known prior. I also learned a lot about modern video cameras, and a new up-and-coming set of them known as DSLRs (why am I using a photo camera for cinematic film shooting? [my naïve thoughts back then]). I  inevitably grew a fondness with being able to utilize tech in the form of cameras to create cinematic artwork. It was in university that I got into my first foray with computer programming, two classes that involved understanding the fundamentals of Python. As a tech enthusiast, and someone who loves spending constant time on a computer, as you would expect.... I hated those classes... "Why am I spending time learning 'computer programming' if I want to work in film?" I would frequently ask myself. I often found myself doing the bare minimum to get through those classes. I think if I'd have a more open mind, I would see how thinking as a programmer would ultimately become a benefit in terms of how I would structure and execute things with film projects. However, at the time, I also subconsciously didn't think I was smart enough to understand the fundamentals of computer programming. As those classes passed, I was able to shift my focus on back into the creative world of Film and Digital Media. As we got closer to working on our junior and senior capstone projects, I had started to notice that I was drowning in other cohort members who had such a distinct eye for creativity and storytelling. I would often envy those who were coming up with such creative ideas and visions for a final project. Their dedication to making incredible projects started to cause a dwindling in an interest in pursuing a career in Film, paired with going through a very difficult breakup that I did not have the emotional maturity to be able to cope with. Towards the end of my university career, I was phoning in my roles in other people's visions during capstone time. I was unmotivated, depressed, uninspired, and hoping to finish my tenure as quickly and painlessly as possible. 

When I served my time in the final two years of university, I was starting to look forward to what "I was going to do with my life™." I started dropping off poorly-assembled resumes to big-time local film studios and mom-and-pop video production companies. I was not paying attention when my instructors would mention the pecking order of getting started in film. I thought I could quickly and easily get a career as a junior film editor... Needless to say, I was working full-time at a cafe for a few months. At this time, I was pretty accepting where I was at, and knew at least I could hold down something while I looked for a film position that suited me best. I was lucky enough to get a full time position with a wonderful lady who would frequent my cafe pretty often. She had her own small-time production company, and offered me a job to work for her as her personal assistant while learning the ropes of working in film. I thought that this was my "in" into my field. I was in a job where I could learn about working in film professionally, and I had access to some unbelievably tasty snacks and coffee! Of course, still being young and naïve as I was, my university work-ethic started to carry over into this job. I would show up 30-mins late most days, have a fixed mindset around just doing what I'm supposed to do, and hoping that if I keep up with doing my boss's chores, that I would be able to work on a film shoot. This royally upset my employer as she saw that I had some bad-habits instilled in me by myself. I was let go after many conflicts with my job performance. 

Many years had passed, I had gotten a job at Starbucks that I worked at for many, many, painstakingly long years. I was content working there while still hoping a film production job would fall into my lap. At one point, around mid 2021, an old university connection came to me asking if I was looking for work. Excitingly, I said yes! And he was able to hook me up with a Production Assistant gig for a show called "The Cleaning Lady." To this day, I haven't watched it, and at the time, I was questioning why I needed to report to "the cleaning lady"... Is this a janitorial role I signed up for? My first day in, I was looking for where I needed to go to get a Covid test done to get cleared to work on set. I was driving everywhere on set, and couldn't find where the testing area was. I inevitably parked near one of the trailers of the production. I walked up and saw that the trailer was for location handling, I knocked on the door hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I waited for about 10 seconds after knocking, and I knocked again. Immediately after the second knock, the door aggressively swung open to reveal a very irate man. "I SAID COME IN" he screamed at me. I apologized that I couldn't hear him, I then very calmly asked him where I needed to go for Covid testing, to which he cut me off immediately and angrily. "THIS IS NOT THE COVID TESTING AREA, GET OUT, GET OUT!!" he yelled at me as I quickly ran out the trailer. Very shaken, I thought, "What in the world did I just sign up for?" Luckily, I was able to find where I needed to go, and was quickly able to find my post. I was the Production Assistant in charge of running "Crafty" (a long way of saying that I was essentially manning a snack station next to the office PAs at the studio. In contrast to the screaming maniac I had encountered at the location trailer, the people who were responsible for me were very kind to me and explained what my job entailed. They told me that what I had was a very easy position, and that all I needed to do was fetch snacks, coffee, and utensils for all the below-the-line members of the shoot. This job was indeed very easy! I would do this job all day for 12, sometimes 15, long... never-ending hours. I would get home, having done the same repetitive task all day, at around 8:00 P.M., would have a few hours at home, before I would ultimately go to bed to wake up the next day at 5:00 A.M. to do it all over again. I do believe that this was the point in which I decided, "this film thing probably isn't for me."

With doing this long, repetitive job that felt like I was serving time in a prison for 12 hours a day looking at the same blank walls, I was also doing videography jobs to help bring other people's visions to life (sound familiar?). I would get paid, maybe $40-60 dollars for these jobs.  It was getting to a point where I was losing any and all desire to really “get into” the film industry. Shortly thereafter, I was working for a little, small-time video production company that had no direction and was run by a batch of marijuana enthusiasts just "doing whatever.” I had also actually gotten laid-off for not… participating in the same activities that they did. This was then I realized that I wanted nothing to do with this particular field anymore. This was the weird, stoner-ific straw that broke the camel’s back. I knew I wanted to pursue something else...