I Worked on the Star Wars Saga and All I Got Was This Stupid Story

When you freelance for “celebrities”, the arch-villain is your self-esteem.

In this galaxy, millions of human beings believe they’re the hugest Star Wars fan out there.

My brother is one of them. I grew up in a home where May the 4th is a bank holiday, and dogs go by the name of Chewie. Call it galactic alignment, but I was at my brother’s place when I was asked to join the Resistance.

Yet, you won’t find my name credited anywhere near the movie.

What happened, you say?

The arch-villain to any freelancer: self-esteem.

How I Met Skywalker

In 2018, I submitted my Ph.D. thesis and left the legal firm where I was working. I love people like Carter Kilmann, who tell you to plan your departure from the corporate world. I was unwise not to do that. Twice.

There are plenty of fairytales on becoming the master of your own fate.

When you quit your job on an impulse, enthusiasm may quickly fade away.

Your energies will drain as fast as your bank account, as “living the dream” becomes “doing whatever keeps you afloat”.

As a true Millenial, I’ve tried more jobs than nail lacquers.

Before lawyering up, I volunteered in movie and tv festivals. Among other things, I entered the subtitling world. I became fluent in both German and English and trained as a translator to Italian.

In 2019, I started looking for positions as a translator.

I wasn’t expecting my applications to go anywhere. I never freelanced before, but it looked like an acceptable temporary solution.

“Since I don’t care, I might as well aim for the stars”, I thought.

So I applied for both agencies and gigantic companies such as Netflix, Disney, Condé Nast.

No surprise, none of them got back to me.

Until they did.

Dating a Star

As a teenager, I was a huge fan of a teen drama called One Tree Hill.

In the third season, one of the leading females, Peyton Sawyer, dates the bass player of the emo-punk band Fall Out Boy.

“I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me”; that’s both the episode’s title and an actual song. It gives you a hint at the lack of a happy ending.

In the job market, dating a celebrity is not uncommon.

Working for a renowned company has a deep impact on your self-esteem. It mines any balance you may have worked on. It’s like a pendulum. It oscillates from believing you gained their celebrity status to turning into a doormat.

Self-doubt may affect the very existence of your work. Are you really worth it? Will you blow your chance? Will they regret hiring you?

An underrated song by Fall Out Boy called The (After) Life Of The Party hits this exact feeling: I’m a stitch away from making it and a scar away from falling apart.

It takes a LOT of self-discipline to get out of that cave. Nobody teaches it at school.

The Subtitling Menace

My job in The Rise of Skywalker was the quality check of subtitles. In other words, I had to watch the movie and correct the subtitle’s typos, mistranslations, and timing issues.

The work request stated that I had 1 day and a half to do the job.

“Easy peasy”, I thought.

The files hadn’t been translated yet. Unfortunately, the translators had a similar deadline, and I obviously could only start after they handled everything. Between the moment I received the subtitles and the one I was supposed to deliver the final edit, there were less than 24 hours, and 8 of them were supposed to be of sleep.

I pressed play. Timing, specs’ violations, wrong translations, missed references. I kept finding mistakes that I had to correct.

Instead of sending an email to the project manager of the following contents:

a) The files weren’t translated properly, and they needed heavy changes b) It wasn’t fair that I did the translation on the pay of the quality check (FYI, less than a third of the translation fee) c) I needed more time to do that and fair pay

I silenced myself, and I chose to:

a) do the job b) do not complain c) do not sleep to meet the deadline

The worse was yet to come. By the time I got to the end of the guidelines, I had discovered that I was not “allowed” to credit my work. While you may be astonished that there was no obligation to include translator credits, the quality checker was totally out of the picture.

A little issue: it felt like both people were me, and still, there was no room for getting my work acknowledged.

The Empire of Subordination Strikes Back

In the corporate world, you get used to hierarchies. There are employers and employees. Whenever there’s a boss, communications are unilateral. They take the form of orders instead of dialogues.

If you experienced the corporate world, you might end up acting according to a hierarchic structure even though you’re freelancing. Clients’ requests appear as “rulings”, and you end up silencing your own needs because you are too afraid of overstepping.

That’s what happened with the Star Wars situation.

Not only it seemed cocky to criticize someone else’s work, but I feared I would be labeled as a troublemaker and eventually losing the chance to work on Disney’s projects again.

Thus, I ended up acting as if the client was my boss.

I didn’t negotiate. I didn’t withhold my work to obtain what was right first. And I felt it was “my duty” to just do the job.

It wasn’t.

I agreed to a task that was supposed to take me a few hours at best, not a whole working day. And I surely didn’t agree to be a ghost, something they should have told me upfront and not insert inside a 60-pages guideline that was given to me after I already accepted the job.

The Rise of Self-Esteem

The only thing I’m happy about is that I finally found the guts to say: this is not correct.

After I handled the file, I wrote an email to the project manager:

Please beware this was my first QC, and I don’t intend to be rude, but I wasn’t expecting such a poor translation. QC took me ages (I’m 100% sure I spent more time than the translator on this, and I wasn’t supposed to).

If the next 26 minutes stream is like this, my time (and pay) for QC won’t be appropriate. I’m really sorry to write this — also because I’m new and I don’t want to look like an annoying person, but frankly, it seems unfair not to.

What I’m less happy about is that I only made my “anger” a money issue. Probably, that felt like an urgency at a time of no different income. I realized after that not getting credited for my work was way worse. After I sent the email, the project manager got me in touch with the translator. The next stream went more or less smooth.

When I handled the second file, I asked for elucidation of the translator credits.

I was ignored. Sometimes I think I should have disregarded the guide and inserted my name anyway. I’m pretty sure nobody checks the subtitles further.

But maybe I’ve always been less of a rebel than I thought I am.

End of The Saga

Freelancing comes with a lot of undervalued consequences.

On the other side of freedom stands loneliness.

You’re alone in dissecting any aspect of the project you’re working on. You’re alone in evaluating its difficulty and solving any issue. Moreover, you’re alone in framing injustices and fighting for your rights.

As a result, you’ll end up struggling a lot with your self-worth, and you may adopt a remissive attitude.

Here are the three mantras I took with me out of this episode:

• Push your limits: It might sound like a cliche but hear me out first. When I replied to those job positions, I wondered if I was self-sabotaging. At first, I believed that I purposely chose “impossible” companies because I knew the chances of getting in were the slightest. Now I know that no matter what you think of yourself and of the reasons for your actions, there’s no gain without risk. Risk any rejection you can. Just do it. Because you never know when you may end up accepted.
• All fishes are fishes: get over the tendency to over relate the task you’re doing to your self-worth. You are not a star because you are dating a star. You are not less worthy than people who are. We are all fish. In the long run, someone has to make it. There’s always a chance that someone is you. And if that’s not you, you’re only making your way in this world in a different way.
• Do not be afraid of speaking up: Money comes and goes. And there will always be situations where you feel you deserved more than what you earned. But if you lack respect and credit for your work, it will be worse. Do not silence your needs. Of course, when you accept a task, you assume a duty to deliver it, but you also have a right to question the fairness of changing the original deal. “Freelancer” is not a synonym for “rebel”, but rebelling is part of the job.

Now, look back at that title: is it working on Star Wars really “nothing”?

I guess it’s not. I still got paid. I still learned a couple of things. I still got a story — hopefully, a good one.

Low self-esteem, you’re not my father. Now stop breathing on my neck.