It has come to my attention that this year is the 20th anniversary of a TV show called Student Bodies.
This makes me feel really old. You see, Student Bodies is one of the last projects I worked on back when I made my living in film & TV production. I served as production coordinator on its first season, a few years before I entered the tech world and left behind everything I hated about the entertainment business.
Working on the show was… an interesting experience. I wasn’t bad at being a production coordinator — my detail-oriented brain was well suited to it — but I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t enjoy it. The role was stressful. I worked ridiculously long hours. There was always too much work, or someone demanding something of me. (For some reason, that didn’t stop me from being a production coordinator again on another show the following year — what was I thinking?) Thankfully, within a few years I made the permanent switch to Web-related work and never looked back.
I never really watched the show, but apparently it has somewhat of a cult following of people who remember seeing it as a kid, which is kind of cool. Some of the cast will be reuniting at a convention in Toronto this fall.
In a fit of nostalgia, I went back to take a dip in my files from that era. Being a bit of a packrat, there was lots to choose from. Here are just a few I’d like to share. Paperwork, mostly. Once a production coordinator, always a production coordinator, maybe.
Kathryn Presner 