London’s Calling, but the Employers Sure Weren’t.

Having only moved to London, England a few months earlier, I was happy to secure work at centrally-located MME after randomly being found on LinkedIn (wow! I guess that site really does work!). It was definitely reason to celebrate, because, trust me, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, getting a job as a non-Brit in this country is no easy feat! And to be fair, I can understand why. A day barely goes by when I don’t see a person rolling a suitcase down the street — indicative of how transient a town this city is. London attracts newcomers from all over the world, whether to join partners or relatives, to start a new life, or to take advantage of visas readily available to those under 30 and part of the commonwealth. Yup, the streets are packed with Aussies and Canadians and so are the job boards.

So upon getting the job, I was one happy little Canadian! And as if a monthly paycheck and being surrounded by a ton of British accents wasn’t exciting enough, I soon discovered I’d be working on the film “Kick-Ass.” For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Kick-Ass is a Universal Pictures film directed by Matthew Vaughn and based on a popular comic by Mark Miller. Although it hadn’t been released in theatres yet, the trailers with Nicholas Cage and the kid from Superbad were awesome! Kick-Ass is everything I love in a film: action, comedy and awkward teenagers.

Little did I know this project would end up kicking my ass. Ha ha ahem.

MME had been chosen by Universal to not only work on international packaging and marketing for the film, but localize all materials for the UK market as well… and on very tight deadlines. I was ecstatic to be working on something that didn’t involve strict brand standards and cheesy stock photography. Instead, this project would involve a lot of creative thinking, fresh ideas and Photoshop work where adding lighting and effects to otherwise boring photos was encouraged. As a bonus, I was told I would be the sole designer on the project, which was initially very exciting. After all, that way I’d be sure every detail could be perfect… right?

Unfortunately after months of working harder than I ever had in my life, and on a much lower salary than I had been earning in Toronto and California (that’s London for ya!), it became inevitable because of the sheer size of the project that I was going to have to let other designers and freelancers help out if we wanted to make the deadline. *sigh* It’s every perfectionists worst nightmare. I was also reminded of how important it is to detach yourself from your work. But I learned a lot more than that on this project too…

In my next post: 7 things I learned from working on Kick-Ass.

© 2010 Universal Studios, Kick-Ass and MarketMe