{"id":514,"date":"2014-03-10T00:01:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T04:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2016-03-13T12:01:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T16:01:27","slug":"friday-feature-former-student-dan-crawley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Friday Feature: Former Student Dan Crawley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome <\/strong>to the first in a series of weekly blog posts featuring my former students and where their lives have taken them so far.\u00a0 My hope is that each individual feature, and the collection as a whole, will interest and inspire young people, giving them a sense of the unique experiences and the wide array of possibilities that await them in the world.\u00a0 Lots of paths for lots of journeys, in other words.<\/em><\/p>\n

This first post may seem a bit obtuse for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 First, because it didn\u2019t get posted on Friday the way I\u2019d planned.\u00a0 Second, because our featured student chose not to attend college, which might be a little peculiar coming from a blog that\u2019s a companion to a book about seizing one\u2019s entire college experience.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the most important lessons of the book, however, is to be open-minded to all the wonderful experiences the world might throw at you and to follow our mantra:\u00a0 Know Thyself, Have a Plan, and Assume No One Else Cares.<\/em><\/p>\n

When you meet Dan in what follows, you\u2019ll see that he\u2019s surely done that.<\/em><\/p>\n

(NOTE: \u00a0Pictures of some of Dan’s work will be peppered throughout; however, most of what he creates is owned by the movie studios, so visit IMDB to get a sense of the breadth of his work HERE<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Crawley<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n

I\u2019m not really sure how to write advice for young people who are on the cusp of entering or are already in college.\u00a0 I\u2019m actually not really sure how to write in general.\u00a0 I was a good student through all of my school years, but those years ended with graduating high school.\u00a0 My story actually diverges from the norm before I received my diploma which came by way of mail, and not via walking down the aisle in cap and gown.<\/p>\n

I have a tendency to get long winded, so I\u2019ll try to hit the play by play and get to the point.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe my years in middle school and high school were too terribly different than most youngsters and I\u2019m sure I faced many of the same adversities and challenges that anyone faces.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t popular and I wouldn\u2019t even say I was generally very well liked.\u00a0 I was a kid from a small, lower middle class town that attended a school comprised predominantly of kids of wealthy and conservative families.\u00a0 My reaction was obviously to draw attention to myself via imagery and appearance contrary to that world.\u00a0 This made high school an experience I wanted to end sooner rather than later and so with all my credits completed by the middle of my senior year, I graduated early at barely 17 years old.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This is not Dan. This is Mega Man.<\/p><\/div>\n

Art had always been a focus for me since a very young age, and I was drawing pretty much non-stop since as early as 5 years old.\u00a0 It was something that I had a natural ability at and that I was happy to practice to sharpen those skills further.\u00a0 Somewhere around the age of 9 or 10 I saw a behind the scenes special involving special make-up effects used for movies.\u00a0 I was fascinated by the imagery I think more than the actual process since I hadn\u2019t been exposed to a lot of the types of movies that are heavy in that realm.\u00a0 Animatronics in particular grabbed my attention since my interest in all things mechanical or electronic was second only to my insatiable need to produce art.<\/p>\n

By the time that early graduation from high school came along, I had convinced my parents to let me attend a specialty trade school for special effects make-up and animatronics in Orlando.\u00a0 This was a long way from where I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, I was only 17, and my parents were pretty adamant that I go to college first.\u00a0 They argued that I should get a college education first, and then I could attend the trade school if I still wanted to.\u00a0 They thought it would be important to have something \u2018to fall back on\u2019.\u00a0 I even humored them by visiting a school in Pittsburgh that had what they called an Industrial Design Technology program, which was a fancy way of conveying that they taught a watered down version of special effects.\u00a0 It was a 2 year program, and the trade school was only just over 4 months.\u00a0 I knew what I wanted to do and thought that the quicker I could get into the business and just start working, the better.<\/p>\n

I won the battle and moved to Orlando at 17 years old and attended that trade school.\u00a0 I was all alone, and my parents actually had to lie on the application for me to have an apartment and say that my older brother was living with me because they wouldn\u2019t allow a minor to live there alone.\u00a0 I was already a few weeks into school when the rest of my high school class walked the aisle.\u00a0 My diploma was mailed to my parent\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

I finished the program and moved back home by the fall to save money and decide on my next move.\u00a0 My parents took on a great financial burden to send me to that trade school both in tuition and in housing me while I was there.\u00a0\u00a0 I held odd jobs at nights and weekends while I was there to pay for what I could, but I actually owed money to the bank by the time I left Florida.\u00a0 This intensified my desire for success with the obligation to fulfill their investment.\u00a0 I knew that all of the work was in Los Angeles, so that was where I needed to go.\u00a0 I had a friend whose mom lived out there and he was also eager to move to Los Angeles, so we decided after the first of the year we would move out there together.\u00a0 Two weeks before our intended move, however, my friend bailed on me, and with that went any kind of connection or housing in a city an entire country away.<\/p>\n

\"Dan<\/a>

Dan doing his thing.<\/p><\/div>\n

This was another time I made a decision to take an unorthodox approach.\u00a0 I moved to Los Angeles anyway, without my friends or family, barely 18 years old, and only about $2000 to my name that I had saved from working since returning from Orlando.\u00a0 I drove across country without the internet, a cell phone, or a place to live.\u00a0 I can honestly say that it didn\u2019t seem as crazy as it sounds now, and I\u2019ve never been so excited in my life.\u00a0 I was incredibly fortunate to have parents that supported me even if they didn\u2019t understand me.\u00a0 I was na\u00efve enough to think that there was no other option but to be successful.<\/p>\n

The first 6 months were very hard, but I did it on my own and never had to borrow any money.\u00a0 I worked a grocery store nights and weekends to support myself very modestly.\u00a0 During the day I worked at a special effects shop for free doing all of the odd jobs nobody wanted to do, but I watched and listened and learned.\u00a0 I put in as many hours as I could and jumped at any opportunity I got to learn or be involved.\u00a0 I quickly realized that my trade school education was outdated and nearly worthless.\u00a0 It was actually a scarlet letter to the people in the business, and so it became my secret pretty quickly.\u00a0 After about 8 months I was finally being paid and was able the leave the grocery store and make make-up and special effects my only job.\u00a0 It was a very proud moment, but I still had a long way to go.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This is also not Dan. This is Dan’s work.<\/p><\/div>\n

I started bouncing around to different effects houses in the area, building upon my skills and luckily my wages too.\u00a0 By a year and a half in, I got a job at the top special effects house in the entire business.\u00a0 It was owned by the man who was the subject of that behind the scenes special that had ignited my passion all those years ago as a child.\u00a0 It was a place where the top artists in the field worked on the highest profile movies and projects in the business.\u00a0 I was only 19 years old when I got the job, and although I was at the very bottom, I was still in.\u00a0 It seemed as though all of my hard work, sacrifice, and probably a little luck had all converged to give me what I had dreamed of.<\/p>\n

It was short lived.<\/p>\n

A series of concussive blows to my newfound success came within less than a month.\u00a0 My roommate told me he was moving, which left me with no place to live.\u00a0 My car broke down and I didn\u2019t have enough money to fix it or get a new one.\u00a0 I was able to borrow a bicycle from a friend and ride it 7 miles each way to work at my dream job, but was hit by a car on two separate occasions in one week.\u00a0 Then I got laid off from that dream job since the movie we were working on came to an end and I was the low man on the totem pole.\u00a0 Finally, September 11 happened and pulled the rug out from an entertainment industry already debilitated by a writer\u2019s strike from the previous summer.\u00a0 By the end of November I was out of money, there were no prospects for work, and I had to move out of my apartment.\u00a0 After nearly two years in the industry that I fought desperately to be a part of, I put what little I owned in storage and headed back to my parents\u2019 house in Illinois literally penniless.<\/p>\n

\"Not<\/a>

Not Dan returning home.<\/p><\/div>\n

Discouraged but not defeated, I took the month of December to spend time with my family and devise a path back to Los Angeles.\u00a0 Here came some hard choices and my naively ambitious answers again.\u00a0 By mid-January I was on a plane back to California where I would live out of a single duffle bag on my friend\u2019s couch.\u00a0 I found a few days\u2019 work where I could and rode that borrowed bicycle in the bitter cold early morning hours to get there on time.\u00a0 By the end of February I had found a room to rent, and by mid-April I was able to buy a car.\u00a0 In less than a year I went from the height of my career, to a worse situation that when I began it, and finally back to enough of a baseline to survive and look for further opportunity.<\/p>\n

The story wraps up pretty quickly from that point.\u00a0 Within less than a year from moving back I had worked my way to supervising small crews and working most of the months of the year.\u00a0 I think it was somewhere in my fourth year that my parents finally decided that what I was doing was an actual career.\u00a0 From about that point on I\u2019ve worked steady ever since and had some amazing opportunities and experiences along the way.\u00a0 14 years later I still love what I do, and that\u2019s not to say it can\u2019t get monotonous and boring, but I\u2019m truly lucky to earn a living at something I\u2019d be doing anyway.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The eyes have it.<\/p><\/div>\n

I think that almost all of my successes came from a combination of saying yes to every opportunity and then working hard to make those opportunities a success.\u00a0 There were many times when I was asked if I knew how to do something and the answer was always \u2018yes\u2019 whether I knew how or not.\u00a0 I have truly lived a trial by fire.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always believed that by throwing myself into an unfamiliar or challenging situation I will rise to it and thus become stronger for it.\u00a0 This can be a dangerous game to play, but it is one that I believe plays a large part in my education via experience.<\/p>\n

Most of the skills I use on a daily basis can\u2019t be taught in a school.\u00a0 I would say the number one most important tool to success in my field is problem solving ability.\u00a0 Everything we do is custom and never has been done before, so while your experiences from previous projects can be applied, every job presents a new set of unique challenges.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if you can effectively teach instinct in a classroom.\u00a0 My kind of problem solving is a step by step way of thinking that requires a cool head and a logical approach, but also a little luck and magic.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I could ever really say if I\u2019m left or right brained since everything I create and every choice I make are the result of perhaps just being advantageously scatter brained.\u00a0 I also don\u2019t know that I\u2019m qualified to give advice as to what path young people today should take since the world has changed so much since I was that age.\u00a0 But passion and perseverance seem to be an integral part of it.\u00a0 All I can do is share with you what got me to where I am today in my career and say that it won\u2019t be the same for anyone else.\u00a0 Every journey can take many different paths to arrive at the same destination.\u00a0 Are any of them the right one if they all lead to the same place?\u00a0 Some are certainly easier or more direct, but perhaps won\u2019t build the character necessary to be the most successful or effective once you arrive.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IMG_9291\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMAG0219\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC_1730\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the first in a series of weekly blog posts featuring my former students and where their lives have taken them so far.\u00a0 My hope is that each individual feature, and the collection as a whole, will interest and inspire young people, giving them a sense of the unique experiences and the wide array of possibilities that await them … Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carpecollege.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}