We recently connected with Therese DeCleene and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Therese thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
My parents were, and still are, the most supportive people in my life. They raised me to be disciplined and unafraid of doing the hard work. Quality work will most likely yield quality results. However, my parents taught me that you don’t do quality work just to get something in return, but because it’s the principle of the thing. Coming from a Catholic family, we encourage humility and not just doing something purely for the praise it will grant us. Do it because it’s the right thing to do. Do it because you’re called to be your best self in everything you do. At the beginning of my career as an assistant online editor, I was too focused on getting my name in the end credits. Now, four years later, I realize what’s more important. It’s doing my job to the best of my ability and keeping healthy work relationships. It’s about learning my craft better and figuring out how to get better in the tasks at hand. In the end, people won’t remember what you did, but what kind of person you were and how you conducted yourself.
Therese, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Therese DeCleene. I work in the animation industry as an assistant online editor in California. Originally, I went to college for live-action editing. I had just graduated college when the pandemic hit and all the live-action productions shut down. Fortunately, I found a job at a post-production animation company and have been there ever since. There, we work on finishing/onlining, that is mostly color grading, VFX, and audio mixing. I believe I have grown exponentially at this company. I have wonderful people with whom I work, and they have taught me numerous things, both technically and professionally. Personally, I believe that my work ethic has gotten me quite far. I always strive to do my best with the task at hand, whether it’s an easy task that will take 5 minutes or a complicated one that will take weeks.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I had to unlearn is that you must do something this way and only this way in order for it to be right. In fact, there are multiple ways to do something right and get to the same conclusion.
We were working on getting an episode onlined in DaVinci Resolve. I was onlining it in Resolve because eventually it had to be color graded anyways in Resolve. However, another person did it another way in Premiere Pro. Instead of focusing on the end goal of getting it onlined, I was too focused on whether it was being done the way I thought it should be done.
People will have different methods of doing things, but as long as in the end, the product is correct, it doesn’t really matter how you got there.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I think being hardworking and trying to practice humility in an industry where almost everyone is out to get as many credits as they can on a show or be praised for the great job they did is what helped build my reputation within my market. I know now that it’s the journey and the people you meet along the way. Life is much bigger than a 2 second credit at the end of a show.
Image Credits
I took the pictures of my credits for the Netflix shows.