The Verdict Is In: My New Writing Job

About a month and a half ago, one of my favorite DVD review websites, DVD Verdict, posted an item saying they were looking for writers and editors. It was an open help wanted ad, and something inside me said "You could totally do this." I wrote a review of one of my DVD's and sent it in as a writing sample... three weeks later, I was put on staff as "Judge Michael Rubino."

The site has this judicial theme to all of its reviews. All of the writers are judges (some are appellate judges!) and the reviews all follow a creative court-case format. That was the reason I really liked the site in the first place. At least I'll be able to use my high school mock trial experience to help navigate the formatting.

This is such a great experience, and I know it's only going to get better. I'm actually using the skills I learned in a number of creative writing courses at Seton Hill to do this job. Each week, I pick DVD's from a list I would like to review. Some of those DVD's get sent to me, and I am assigned deadlines to watch and review them by. The best part of all, aside from getting writing credits, is that I get to keep the DVD's.

My very first review for the site was just posted this morning. I reviewed the second season of the classic television show Mission: Impossible. I am a fan of the series, so I was looking forward to diving in to the seven discs of the second season. Of course, I was probably crazy for picking this has my first thing to review, since I had to watch almost 27 hours of the show in a matter of two weeks. As I said in the tagline for my review: "Judge Mike Rubino self-destructed five seconds after writing this review..." I watched a lot of episodes.

I'm sure I'll be posting here often about what's going on over at DVD Verdict. This is an exciting second-job for me while I work part-time in Pittsburgh. Court adjourned.