Tag Archives: Sony Pictures Studios

Eric's Posts, Experiential, Prepping Kandu

Farewell Email to Sony Pictures

My 12-year-old son asked me how I felt leaving work after 20 years.  “I feel grateful,” I said.  “I got to work on some very cool projects, with some really smart people, at a major motion picture studio, helping people entertain the world.  I walked by Spider-man, Batman, Captain Kirk, and Thor.  I feel blessed.  But most of all, I’m looking forward to the future, spending time with you, your brother, and mom.”

My 10-year-old son started to ask me a question, then stopped, mumbling, “It makes me cry to ask the question.”

“What is it, Trent?” I asked.

“Well, . . . you have a lot of friends at work.  Aren’t you gonna be sad to leave them?” he asks and sniffles as tears well up in his eyes, remembering what it was like to move to a different school.

“Yes, I am going to be sad, . . . very sad.  But we can still write each other and they can watch what we do on our website,” I said. “Let’s give them something to see.”

I started as a laborer in the stock room and leave as a vice president.  What a great ride.  Believing we are the sum of passions pursued, I’m pleased for what was and for what is to come; for both me and the studio.  Sony Pictures Post retains managers and operators capable of developing the world’s smartest, most innovative, most modeled post operation.  The group will always be of great interest to me. In my own corny way, I paraphrase a line from Out of Africa: “Sony Post may not always remember me, but I will always remember Sony Post.”  I don’t know whether I’ll start something right away with another post opportunity, or if instead I’ll press the “pause” button on the career for awhile and the “record” button on the family.  Whatever happens, it won’t be boring.  But, I’ll miss my Sony family.

Thank you for your well wishes, love, and support.  May your wildest dreams come true, your passion and life merge into one, your fantasy be your reality.

Check out our website www.rigneyskandu.com, post positive comments, “Like” us on Facebook (when we get a FB page), watch our channel (once we get it one up), and stay in touch. Don’t make Trent sad.

All the best,

Eric

Eric's Posts, Experiential, Prepping Kandu

Soft Hands

“Your hands are sooo soft,” Leslie coos in my ear, her thumb stroking the inside of my outstretched palm as we dance across the Valentine’s Day dance floor.  Her knowing tone supports her awareness that soon, soft hands will no longer be the case.  These hands that now gently guide her across the dance floor to the beat of a Neil Diamond impersonator are the unblemished hands of a motion picture executive and a father of two young boys.  For the past 20 years from a climate-controlled corner office in Southern California, these hands drove cars, tapped computer keyboards, and held phones; growing more pink and tender with each passing year. Leslie shared the ups and downs of my professional growth, from laborer to executive, the struggles and triumphs.  Well aware of the effort and sacrifice it took to get us where we are today, her eyes clearly indicate a relish for our current circumstance, inhaling the memory, and appreciating the effort it took to make my hands so smooth.

It’s our twenty-fourth Valentine’s Day celebration together, and I adore her as if it were the first, well okay, . . . the second.  We spent our first Valentine’s Day as a couple apart.  I was five hundred miles out to sea from Los Angeles, captaining a 32-foot sailboat bound for the Marquesas Islands.  She was finishing her French Literature studies at UCLA.  After graduating, she would meet up with my crew and me in Hilo; and sail through the Hawaiian Islands and from Kauai to San Francisco with us.  Sailors call this long distance, casual type of sailing, “cruising.”  Leslie knows what open ocean sailing and anchoring do to a sailor’s hands. Pulling sailing sheets, lifting galvanized anchor chain, and tools would soon be the objects these hands hold.  Additionally, the elements of sand, sun, and sea play their role, transforming princely baby-bottom palms into salt-encrusted instruments of adventure.  What does Leslie know that should make her wax so?  She knows that soon, we will be out to sea again—this time together, with our two young sons; for an undetermined duration; possibly 5 years . . . or more.

Righthand 2014

Eric's Posts, Experiential, Prepping Kandu

Last Day at “Work”

I’ve imagined this day for more than ten years.  When asked, “When are you going to leave Sony Pictures and start sailing around the world?” my reply was, “In two years.”  For ten years I was always two years away from leaving the studio.  Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, eventually my “in-two-years” prediction was correct. Today, looking back two years, it happened.  Today, after more than twenty years, I no longer wake up and prepare myself to go to the studio.

Imagining what this day would be like, I thought it would feel like the first day of a prolonged vacation, liberating and invigorating.  But it doesn’t.  Over that past few days, so many of my colleagues wrote and/or met with me to thank me for my service and wish me well on my upcoming adventure.  Not wanting to cry throughout the day, the last day was an exercise in burying my reflex to connect with my emotions, as I looked my friends in the eye, thanked them, and hugged.  I was on the verge all day long.  I love these people and I love what we’ve done together.  I made them all promise to stay in touch, to read our blog, to write in.  As the day came to a close and I walked out from my office for the last time, I felt vulnerable.  No longer would I so easily be able to provide for my family.  Income and insurance will no longer by at our fingertips.  We’ll have to develop other ways to support ourselves.  When I told them how I felt, my co-managers reminded me how well I’ve always done with anything I’ve started at the studio.  Any endeavor I started at the studio, when supported by the studio, did very well.  That these skills I take with me.  This venture would be no different.  Because I have the complete support of my family, especially Leslie, this endeavor should be just, if not even more, successful than those at the studio.  In writing this, I find myself not stating that I’m no longer “working,” for I will be working just as hard, if not harder than I did when I was at the studio.

So, this first day, I am not excited about sailing around the world.  I am concerned, just as I was concerned when I started every business venture at the studio.  And just as I have done with every business venture, I will pour my complete attention and effort into making this adventure, and sharing this adventure with an audience I hope to build, a success. Along the way, I will reach out to like-minded experts at every step, for I know that my best work is achieved through collaboration, that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.  You, the reader, are probably an expert in something that can make this trip better, so help us; use your expertise to turn this trip into something wonderful for young people, to inspire them to reach beyond and see what’s on the other side of the rainbow.

Sony Rainbow