I’m a CS grad chasing film, and I can’t tell if I’m being brave or just dumb
Right now I’m cross-legged on my friend Jake’s pullout couch, half a carnitas burrito going cold on the coffee table next to me, and his tabby cat just knocked over my half-empty Monster, so the stain on the couch cushion is new this morning. I moved in here three months ago, after I turned down the full-time SWE offer I’d locked in six months before graduation. My mom still hasn’t stopped sending me links to coding bootcamp refresher courses, like I forgot how to write a for loop or something.
Four years of CS, I did all the expected stuff: two internships at different startups, leetcode every night after class, pulled an all-nighter for my senior capstone that helped a local grocery store track their produce inventory better. The whole time, film was just my silly side hobby. I filmed wedding highlight reels for friends of my parents for 500 bucks a pop, edited my college roommate’s YouTube skits, threw together a 10-minute retrospective video for my CS department’s alumni weekend my senior year. When I stood in the back of the event room watching that video play, and saw a bunch of 60-something alumni wiping their eyes when old footage of their crumbling student lab popped up, that’s when I felt it. It was nothing like the rush I got when I finally fixed a stubborn bug that had been haunting me for a week. That rush was “cool, done, onto the next.” This feeling was like, I made something that stuck with people. I want more of that.
Two weeks ago I went home for my cousin’s wedding, and my uncle the accountant pulled me aside by the punch bowl, looked at the blazer I borrowed from my dad, and said, “You know, I don’t get it. Your dad dropped 80 grand on that degree, you got an offer most kids your age would kill for, and you’re running around making little movies no one watches. That’s just stupid, isn’t it?” And I couldn’t even argue with him. Because I’ve had the exact same thought a hundred times in the last three months.
That’s why I’m writing this, I guess. I need help making a decision I can’t seem to work out on my own. Last week a former intern manager reached out to me out of the blue. Their fintech startup has an opening for a mid-level frontend role, pays 95k, full health insurance, four weeks PTO, it’s mostly remote. It’s not the 120k big tech offer I turned down, but it’s solid. It would get me off Jake’s couch, let me pay my own rent, stop borrowing 20 bucks from him for gas every week. If I take it, I can do film on the side, right? Save up for my own good gear, make my own shorts on weekends, no pressure to take every crappy unpaid editing gig just to get a line on my IMDb page. But every filmmaker I’ve talked to says if you don’t go all in, you never make it. They say if you have a safety net, you’ll never work hard enough to jump. I get the logic, but also… my current safety net is Jake’s couch and 17 dollars in my checking account. Is that really too much of a net? That just feels like being poor.
The thing no one expects is that I don’t even hate coding. Last week I wrote a little Python script that sorted all 400 gigabytes of raw footage for the short I’m editing by location and date, instead of the garbage sequential file names the camera spits out. Saved me three hours of mindless clicking through folders. I sat back after I ran it and thought, huh, that’s actually satisfying. Why do I pretend CS is just this evil dead-end I escaped? I like solving problems, I just like solving different kinds of problems now.
I went to a local indie film meetup last month, bought a seven-dollar IPA I couldn’t afford, stood around trying to look like I belonged. Some guy who graduated from AFI heard I was a CS grad and just snorted into his beer and said, “Great, another tech guy trying to buy his way into our industry.” I didn’t even know what to say. I wasn’t buying anything, I’m editing this whole short for free just to get the experience. I just stood there and drank my warm beer and left 10 minutes later.
Last night I stayed up until 2 a.m. tweaking the color grade on the last shot of that librarian short. It’s a shot of her holding her old 1970s library card up to the window, sun coming through the yellowed plastic laminate. I must have adjusted the warmth 50 times. When I finally got it right, I got that little chill up my spine, the same one I got at the alumni screening. For 10 whole minutes, I didn’t care about my bank account or my upcoming phone bill or my uncle’s stupid comment. It felt right. But then my alarm went off at 9 this morning to pick up the director from the airport, I checked my balance and saw that 17 dollars, and the unread email from the fintech recruiter staring back at me, and that warm feeling vanished fast.
I don’t know what I’m expecting anyone to say here. I don’t need a motivational speech about following your dreams. I already got that part memorized. I also know I’m 22, no kids, no mortgage, but I’m also tired of eating ramen for every dinner and borrowing money to get groceries. Is it stupid to take the job? Is it stupid to turn it down? Everyone acts like it has to be all or nothing, but why? I haven’t figured that out yet. The cat just jumped on my lap and got burrito crumbs all over my only clean sweatshirt. I should probably wipe up that Monster stain before Jake gets home from work. I still haven’t replied to that recruiter email. If you’ve been somewhere close to this, tell me what you’d do.
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