In 1974, he entered the
University of South Carolina,
majoring in acting and per-
forming standup comedy on
the side. He quickly deter-
mined, "if I wanted to eat three
meals a day in South Carolina,
this was not going to cut it," so
he changed his major to finance
and management--a field that
would later prove useful to him
when he became an assistant
director and producer.
He spent his summer breaks
in Myrtle Beach, a tourist hot
spot that swelled from about
10,000 residents in the winter
to more than 100,000 in the
summer. He began producing
comedy commercial spots for
local nightclubs with a college
friend who worked at WTGO
Radio, after the station signed off for the evening. When they returned to
school in the fall, they took samples of their spots to advertising agencies
and immediately started getting calls to create additional comedy spots.
With his friend employed at a Columbia radio station, they again went in
after the station signed off the air at night and cut the spots until they
could afford to build their own studio.
By their senior year, Anderson and his friend had their own studio
and had built a busy radio commercial production business. When a
client asked if they also did television spots, the pair said, "No problem."
Having never before shot a commercial, Anderson ran out and bought a
book on 16mm filmmaking and put himself through a crash-learning
course. They enlisted the aid of another friend who was interested in
filmmaking, got a camera, and learned on the job. Taking a microphone
into the parking lot, they created their own special effects sound library
by recording screeching cars and noises. By Christmas time, Anderson
and partner Rick Page had landed a huge account, and their radio and
commercial production company was thriving. But driving back to school
after the holiday, Page died in a car wreck. With half of the company's
creative talent gone, Anderson struggled to keep the business going while
carrying a nineteen-hour course load.
What do you like
least about your job?
"One of my least favorite
things is that it is an
insecure business. You
don't have a regular job
where you know all year
long you're going to be working . . . Once a
job is over, you really never know where your
next job is coming from."--Arthur Anderson
What do you love most
about your job?
"What I really love is, it is magic making
films . . . I think of a motion picture as a
director's painting on moving canvas. The
brushes he uses to paint his images on that
canvas are his cast and crew. It's my job to
manage those paintbrushes. That's what I
like most about it."--Arthur Anderson
VOICES OF
EXPERIENCE
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