Typical Day
It's 7:15AM. Cameron Fyler's dream about winning a lifetime's supply of bacon pizza is shattered by his alarm clock. Stupid alarm.
He rolls into his shirt and slacks and fixes himself a bagel. As an archivist in a television production office, he doesn't have to be at his desk by 9:00AM precisely. Right now he's working on re-cataloging every Clinton-era sitcom his studio owns. It's not like anyone needs the newest episode of Full House on their desk in half an hour. He can roll in a few minutes early or late without worrying about messing up anybody's schedule.
Cam's out of the house by 8:00AM, ready to enjoy his typically bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles commute. It's bad this morning.
Cam's a patient man—which is a super-useful quality in his field—so he decides to make the best of things. He switches on the radio and plays a little air guitar.
Cam gets into work at 9:15AM, which is later than he would have liked but not that big a deal. He says hello to everyone and heads for his office/video storage room. Officially, this is known as "The Vault," and Cam is officially known as "Vault Manager" (and less officially as "Manny").
Everywhere he looks―everywhere he looks―there are tapes. They're lost out there, they're all alone, and they're in a hopelessly outdated format. It's the twenty-first century, and everything lives in clouds now. Our hero must take the thousands of tapes, digitize them, and organize them neatly.
Cam settles into his ergonomic chair and picks up where he left off yesterday: with some middling office comedy starring that guy from Cheers. It's just crazy how many sitcoms the '90s produced. And he's got to digitize all of them—even the ones that he personally thinks should be forgotten.
It's around 12:45PM that he finishes digitizing the office sitcom. He normally eats lunch sometime between noon and 1:00PM, but it's an inexact time since he doesn't like to walk away from a project that's nearly done. Cam gets up, stretches, and heads out for some fresh air, sunshine, and his favorite seven-dollar burrito.
The one downside to his job? It can be lonely. Cam works by himself, and since he's on a slightly more freeform schedule than everyone else, his lunch break doesn't necessarily coincide with anyone else's. Today, the only chitchat he manages to get in is with the guy in the food truck.
After lunch, Cam moseys back to the Vault and decides what to work on next. It's mind-boggling how much he has to get done. Still, Cam didn't get a PhD just so he could be intimidated by some old tapes. He decides to start working on Coach. Heck, why not?
"Because it will depress you like crazy," turns out to be the answer to that question. After less than an hour, Bill hits what he likes to call "the 2:00PM Slump." Some days he's just a little tired at 2:00PM; but today's not one of those days. Today's one of the days when the tediousness of his job practically paralyzes him.
In the good old days, he would chill out maxing, relaxing all cool and all transferring the master onto a film spool. Then a couple of guys who were up to no good, started saying, "Let's put this all in the cloud."
Now, he has to figure out what format he needs, where he's going to need to put it, whether that format works for the master footage, and a whole heap of other things that will ultimately become obsolete. Some archivist in the future is going to be as annoyed by Cam's outdated digital formatting as he is with these tapes. Really, what's the point?
Cam pushes through. He knows that the best way to beat the blues is to get to work. If he's still feeling down by 4:45PM, he might slip out the door a few minutes early and grab an ice cream. Being the "Vault Manny" has its perks.
By the time 4:45PM does roll around, though, Cam's feeling a lot better. He's gotten a lot of work done, including salvaging a few tapes that were on the brink of ruin. Those episodes of Coach are safe and sound in their new digital format. When the '90s come back into vogue, sometime way in the future, some kid will be able to watch them and laugh their butts off at the old outfits.
If it weren't for Cam, many of these shows would be lost to time. Sure, it can be tedious work sometimes, and no one told him life was gonna be this way―but it could be so much worse. His job could be a joke; he could be broke; his love life could be D.O.A. Actually, his love life is D.O.A., but at least he's accomplishing something professionally. He's a steward for this company's past and future.
Cam cruises out the door at 5:05PM, feeling like he's done something good with his day. He does a smooth walk to his car and goes home. All things considered, the traffic isn't bad—he pulls into his driveway around 6:45PM. After a delicious dinner, Cam enjoys his favorite pastime: He leaves the TV off, and picks up a good book.
As he clicks off the lights at 10:00PM, he takes a minute more to appreciate just how great he has it. He truly loves working in the television film vault. He's the flashy guy in TV; the Manny named Cam.