Coping with long 12hr days

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Ok, I guess I have no choice but to stop hiding a bit. Sure hope nobody on google realizes it's me, but I guess it can't be helped...you could say this job is in the entertainment industry. More specifically, being a name on that long list of credits at the end of something like a movie/TV show or video game. Not as a programmer or anything, but more along the lines of creating the content that goes in these things. I'm sorry for being paranoid, but I can't help but be careful since I know sometimes NT's can be biased against people who aren't totally normal.

I understand the paranoia. I don't let people at work know I'm on the spectrum either.

I'm in an administrative field in a different industry, so I expect the professional cultures of our workplaces are not very similar. From friends that work in the gaming industry I understand that there is a sort of "feast or famine" pattern in the larger companies - hours get longer around release time when the company is trying to meet a deadline, then relax when you are in the early phases of the next project. This would probably vary depending on how much your portion of the work would change based on changes during playtesting. You might talk to a professor - who has worked in the industry (not just taught) - and ask some more detailed questions about the ebb and flow of the work.

Okay, I've worked in this industry. Not sure exactly what you will be doing, but in addition to what I said earlier:

* It can be very on/off. There are periods in which you work 12-to-16 hour days, but they are separated by periods in which the hours are much lighter. I had one gig that neatly broke down into three crazy days / two reasonable days each week. Since my job involved logistics — organizing to get the people, equipment, props, costumes, etc. in the right place at the right time so they could do their bits — I pretty much knew which days would be crazy and which would be calm. Just having that bit of control made doing the crazy days easier.

* Even on crazy days, you can get long stretches in which it's really quite as one group or another is sorting out some problem. Stressful for them, but everyone is left just sitting around with nothing to do but wait. Some of those 16 hour days are actually 6 or 7 hour days with 10 hours of catching up on your email, chatting with others, doing other aspects of your job, reading a good book, working on your screenplay, etc. thrown in.


It may be different in your location, but in my experience, the dramatic arts industries are among the most accepting and accommodating. This probably has something to do with the fact that the field has long attracted a disproportionate number of gays and lesbians, and while some managed to keep their sexuality private, for most it was an open secret, and nobody cared. All anyone worried about was whether or not they were good at their job. That sort of attitude persists.

Seriously, some departments — miniatures, some CGI areas — were wall-to-wall autistics. In other areas they were more scattered. I know; I was always keeping an eye out for people on the spectrum — though I didn't know that's what I was doing, I thought I was just looking for certain personality traits — because they made great assistants. I could show them what needed to be done, supervise them for about a week, then leave them to it, confident that they would do the job properly. Problem was, I kept getting stuck with assistants who were the son/daughter/niece/nephew/kid of a friend/etc. who were interested in the field and wanted to get into it and who were useless because they had the wrong temperament for the type of work I did.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

I understand your reticence, though. It's one thing for the people you work with not to care, especially once you've established you're good at what you do; it's quite another to have everyone know.

I wish you every luck and success.

I can't say much about live dramatic arts, but do know a lot about 3D computer graphic production for games or film. If it's that, then I can say... The days do get long and pressure higher as the deadline approaches; release dates and theatre marketing cycles are unforgiving and we just have to work to get the footage as good as it can be. They say "movies are never finished, they escape." Also many animation jobs are gig-related, you work a lot to finish your part (Superman's cape, for example), then you're back on the market when ani is done. But you're usually rehired for the next gig rapidly along with many of the same crew.

People in the field are spectrum-heavy, because the work suits many of us well. To obsess for hours on a hand motion or walk cycle or fight scene, frame-by-frame kind of fits our working style. There's good camaraderie and friendship in spectrum-friendly ways with these groups, so you're all in it together. Serious nerd territory.

But there are differences from school. Ani school teaches how to use the tools, or parts of the tools - software like Maya or Nuke is huge and complex. But school doesn't teach much about the workflow - how things get from script to storyboard to shotlist to ani to coloring to compositing to edit, and how you fit into that. School doesn't deal with the political/practical stuff like if you're given a bad facial or body rig, and how to either work around it or get it fixed. Then, when the rig is fixed, all of your prior work is affected... stuff like that. And it doesn't get into the perilous economics of producing animated film. Everyone wants to work on it for free, everyone wants to see it for free. For me it was a sobering moment when Digital Domain went bankrupt. But lots of movies/games get done with amazing stories and awesome graphics.

This may not be your area of focus, so adjust to your situation. The stuff I said about writing down your tasks and where you were definitely apply. You were fixing some camera angles, but then saw something wrong with the walk from that angle, then you found a texture problem with the knee, then.... there's a huge stack of subtasks that you need to remember in order to pop back through, in order, to get to where you were a few hours earlier.

In any case you've come a long way to get to this point, so it would be a shame to leave it behind for fear of what "might" happen. I'd go for it and get that first job, and stick with it for a project. THEN you can say how well it works for you; your brain may be perfect for the job, hours or no hours. Hope that helps - now go make us some footage!

Your boss will make a huge difference in how long a day actually feels. If you are doing really important mission critical stuff and she clears a huge path for you, so you can concentrate on your work without interruption--your days might fly by and actually be fun for you each day. Clearing a huge path is getting rid of stuff like unwanted social interaction that can't possibly be useful in getting your work done that day. Someone screens your phone calls so you don't get interrupted. That sort of thing. I heard that Motorola engineers aren't suppose to give out their personal phone numbers to clients.