Media 6 Reading Week 3

Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas’ The Informal Media Economy is about the work that us media students will find after we graduate. Lobato and Thomas classify these work environments as formal or informal but write that these formal enterprises utilize informal type of employment. This is an interesting look at what the future might hold as I would be able to do what I love and that very same affection for the craft might be taken advantage of by underpaying for services. It is true that happiness can come from turning a hobby into actual work but one cannot make a living with the income, or rather lack of that it provides. This very situation reminds of an interview I read a year or so ago with Henry Thurlow, the first American to ever break into the anime industry in Japan. He managed to work for a major animation studio and draw for popular properties, both in Japan and outside. Sounds like a dream scenario but in reality for his six-day work schedule of ten hour days he would get paid only $100 a month. When asked of his time there was worth it, he said the following, “When I was working as an animator in New York I could afford an apartment, buy stuff, and had time to ‘live a life.’ But the artist inside of me was screaming at the fact I wasn’t making really high-quality feature films and series. Now everything about my life is utterly horrible, however the artist in me is completely satisfied.” That kind of passion for the craft is what is being taken advantage of as there are people out there that will subject themselves to such a life just for the privilege of being able to do what you love. This is probably me least focused response to a reading I have done or probably will do but as I was reading I could not resist making the comparison.

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