Ep209: Life After 3 Heart Attacks in 24 Hours | with Marc Wielage

Zack Arnold

I'm here today with Marc Wielage who is a freelance colorist and runs the company Color by Marc and he works in the film and TV industry out here in Los Angeles, California. So Marc, it is a pleasure to have you on my show today

Marc Wielage

Hi Zack, pleasure to be here.

Zack Arnold

So the reason that you are here or reason to really to be more accurate, the reason that I have hunted you down and stalked you is because last November, you had a very acute and dangerous episode with your health that you were very, very public about on Facebook. And as soon as I read it, I said, this is a story that I want people in our industry to hear because it is a great, not a great story. I mean, because obviously what you went through is not great, but it's a very, it's a good cautionary tale for people in our industry to hear and realize that this can kind of happen to anybody. So before we jump into why I contacted you and what the specific story is, I just want people to get an idea of your general background, what you do for a living and what your day looks like.

Marc Wielage

Well, let's say I've been a colorist in Los Angeles for more than 35 years. My first major job was with modern video film. Going all the way back to 1979 1980. I was one of the first six people hired there. And they since grew into a pretty much a powerhouse in LA post production. And after modern video film I worked for a succession of other companies compact video no longer in business, image transform also no longer in business, trans American video no longer in business. Do you see a pattern here? This is this is the state of La post production where companies kind of come and go over time. By 1984. I wound up at complete post which is on Sunset and Gower in LA and through a lot of interesting circumstances I wound up staying there for more than 20 years, I think I wound up wound up about 22 years at complete post as it was turning into Technicolor, and I was one of their staff colorists. And I think anybody who winds up being a colorist for more than a couple of decades becomes a senior colorist or as I like to say as seen your colorist. So I've done everything from major feature films, I've done 400 feature films for different Hollywood Studios over the years, mainly home video versions, I've done maybe 25 or 30 Digital intermediates. I've done countless 1000s of commercials and episodic TV shows, I think 44 networks series, all kinds of documentaries, animation shorts, you name it. So I'm kind of not necessarily a colorist that specializes in one particular thing. But I'm kind of a generalist. However, in the last decade or so I've more or less specialized in long form.

Zack Arnold

And we were talking just a little bit offline before we started recording about how you actually wear a lot of different hats. And you're not just a colorist so kind of walk me through some of the other duties and things that you do throughout the day in the world of post

Marc Wielage

in the old days not to recount a history of color correction. But in the old days, we primarily dealt with film both print and negative and enter positive. And as time went on, that went from kind of an analog world to an all digital file based world. And I would say that began to happen around 1999 2000 When High Definition came in. By the time that happened, we went into sort of a hybrid mode where we were using a lot of videotape. And as videotape began to go south, we started to take those videotapes and films and scan those into hard drives systems servers. So we would use different kinds of servers to play back the material and color correct. The systems we had back then we're talking 15 years ago, were so primitive, and the computers were so underpowered, we couldn't both color correct, and play back on the same system, as you would say with Avid or Premiere. So we had to have one computer just handling the horsepower for playback, and then another computer to do the processing and they would work in tandem. Over time as computers became more powerful. As hard drives became faster. We had the ability now to play back and do the processing on one computer at a time, which is a very efficient way to work. The problem for people like me coming from the traditional world of what we used to call tele Cine is now instead of just being responsible for color correction, working with the client, changing each picture scene to scene shot by shot and making everything match and look good. Now I also had to be responsible for the conform. So all colorists nowadays have had to kind of take off their color correction hat and sometimes put on their finishing hat their conform hat fine Little editing hat, so that we knew how to put the pieces together. I've joked in the past, especially in the last seven or eight years that the Conform has sometimes become more of a challenge than the color. Once the Conform is done, I'm actually relaxed and comfortable. But conforms can be very, very difficult, especially when the client brings us a lot of disparate sources. Nothing seems to be shot on one particular kind of camera. Nowadays, we'll get files from Alexa files from Red files from Sony files from Canon and Pro Res files. And they stir them up in a big soup. And we've got to conform them all as one show which believe it or not, is, is harder to do than it sounds. Because it's not, it's not just a question of jumping in and a timeline. And it's going to work, because every single shot has to be processed differently

Zack Arnold

when it's so funny that you say that because I remember when the transition was happening from tape based on lining and conforming to file base, and everybody was thinking, Oh, the Conform process is going to be so much easier. We don't have to pop in tapes, you can press a button and your whole movie conforms itself. So you're saying that didn't happen?

Marc Wielage

No, that did not. And it's especially difficult for us whether you work in Resolve or Baselight, or Mystica, or any of the other different color correction systems nowadays, we run into train wrecks, depending on whether the original show was correct or edited in AVID versus Premiere versus Final Cut versus something else. And you know, the the XML is near a EFS don't always see life in the same way things change. I'm sure as you're aware, if you've had to pick up an editing project started an avid and you're working in Final Cut, or vice versa, or God forbid, you've got to move it into Premiere, things don't always translate. So that that becomes a huge bit of stress and a huge delay. But you know, we try to take it all in stride and just get all the pieces to fit. What I what I generally do. And what I've what I've advised people I've taught and people I've worked with, is, we always take a reference video from the client. So we have a reference a master with which to match to, so we can take the camera originals, make sure all the pictures are in the right place at the right time. And most importantly, if there's any weird variations, like blow ups, resizes, time changes, speed up, slow down speed ramps and so on, will be able to match those, those do not translate. And that is that is a major issue with resolve and other color correction platforms. Straight speed changes, like if you just decide to drop a shot to half speed or double speed, those generally come across pretty well. It's the speed ramps that are a real problem. morphs are also a problem.

Zack Arnold

Well, for anybody listening to this that doesn't know anything about film production or post production, you just got the most crazy introduction into the life of what it's like living as a colorist, I guarantee you whoever is listening to this, it isn't in post, you've watched television before. This is what it takes to get anything on TV or in a theater. It is a ridiculous process of hundreds and hundreds of steps. That as it sounds, it's very confusing. And it's also very stressful, which is really the reason that I wanted to have you on the show as I I don't want to dive too deeply into the tech, what I really want to talk about is the lifestyle that you lead and then what that lifestyle led to with the event that happened about four months ago. So give me an idea up until last November, what your lifestyle looked like on a daily basis. Just from from the time you got up to the time you went to sleep and how that may have changed over the last 20 or 30 years.

Marc Wielage

Well, I'll try to do it as succinctly as possible. I'll try to do an edit in my head I have an edit and a time compression in my head. My story is relatively simple. I've been freelance since Technicolor kind of had a downsizing back in 2009. And a lot of us were kind of cast to the four winds. So for the last six or seven years, I've been the freelance guy doing everything from sound to color, even some posts supervision. In my case, I always stayed in pretty good shape. I generally go to the gym three or four days a week, primarily strength training. I have the same waist size today that I did back in the 80s. So I haven't changed that much in 30 years. I probably bulked up a little bit. But I mean, from a health point of view, I think I've been pretty good. The interesting thing for me is I noticed in the last six months, I felt like I was slowing down a little bit I would get tired in the middle of the day. I didn't seem to have the stamina that I used to have. And I was watching my diet but But no doubt I could have been eating better than I was. But again, my my waistline wasn't that bad. I've still got a 32 inch waist. And you know, I generally was pretty healthy. It's not like I was coming down with flu every five minutes. But I did feel this kind of rundown symptom. And what I used to compensate for that I thought, Well, I'm just getting older. And this is this is just all that is. So I would knock back some coffee or some five hour energy drinks, or something just to put myself back up so that I could make it through long, you know, 1214 16 hour color correction sessions, some of which were supervised. What happened to me was, again, I'll try to make it fast. I had a night in late, late November, where I had a big meal, took a shower. While I was having a shower, I felt horribly dizzy. I thought maybe I was having an asthma attack. Turned out I was actually having a small heart attack. I grabbed the side of the table in the bathroom, then was able to get back to my room and just took a little nap. And I figured all this is just indigestion. This couldn't be a heart attack, because this is something simple. In the morning, I woke up did a little work had a kind of a heavy lunch. And immediately after the lunch, the symptoms came back hit me like gangbusters, I felt like I got knocked over by a bulldozer. And I started adding up the symptoms. I had pressure and pain in the middle of my chest radiating out to my hands. I felt very, very dizzy, very, very weak. And the weirdest symptom of all, I had massive jaw pain. And I thought what the hell is the jaw pain? Why am I having jaw pain? And so I sat down and talked to my partner talk to a friend of mine who's also in the house. They spent about 15 minutes trying to convince me I was not having a heart attack. And so what we did was I actually got on Google did a search for heart attack and jaw pain, couldn't find anything. So I started trying to convince myself perhaps this is not a heart attack. But ultimately we all decided, yes, this is a heart attack, went down to the local hospital a few blocks away. They checked me out confirmed that yes, I had had a heart attack or as they called it, a heart episode. From there, they said, We can't take care of you. We're going to have to ship you over to UCLA sent me threw me in an ambulance sent me over to UCLA pumped full of what was the pain reliever? Morphine, morphine. Yeah, pump full and morphine, I highly recommend morphine for all post people. This This will make your post production sessions go very well a little shot of morphine. So are they

Zack Arnold

Full legal disclaimer, we don't, we don't send out morphine and post production just saying

Marc Wielage

only only under a doctor's supervision.

Zack Arnold

Exactly. So yes, carry out,

Marc Wielage

they took me down to UCLA, and diagnosed me very quickly, I'd say within four or five minutes had me rolling into the operating theatre. And up to that point, this was all kind of a lark kind of an adventure. You know, I related it to all the TV shows and films we've seen of people having heart attacks and being taken to a hospital, because I'd never had a serious medical incident before this was all very new and strange to me. You know, it's serious when they when they when you burst through the double doors in the operating room, and you look over and there's six very grim looking surgeons, with their hands folded in front of their operating gowns. And you go, Oh, this is very bad. This is this is not going to be a walk in the park. Once there, they were able to pop in a couple of a couple of stents into my heart. And what's interesting is, within five minutes of that procedure, I immediately felt better Gone was the tiredness that I had been feeling over the last year or so. And the official report from the doctor was I had almost 100% blockage in one artery, about 50% blockage and the other artery. And I think the other two were, you know, Fair to middling to the point where the it could be handled. This was the reason why my heart shut down. It wasn't a heart problem, per se. It was bad plumbing.

Zack Arnold

Alright, so then the next question that I have for you is I want to give people a little bit clearer picture of what may have led up to this and then you can confirm or speculate yourself or, you know, kind of give the information that the doctor did, but you've already mentioned that you exercise three or four days per week and that you were doing mostly strength training, but outside of that specific period of the day when you're exercising, what did your level of movement and activity look like throughout the day and what does your diet look like?

Marc Wielage

The I would say very little if the job is fairly sedentary. So the amount of exercise I would get during a normal day aside from going to the gym was pretty minimal. But I have to say the cardiologist and the other people at UCLA told me that they were puzzled by my report by the bloodwork and so on. My so called bad cholesterol was only about 115. And my good cholesterol was about 50, which is where it should be. And they said, normally, it when we see somebody at your age, I'm about 60, we would expect your blood work to be a lot worse, we would expect to see bad cholesterol at about 200 or 250, or maybe even worse. And they were surprised I was in such good shape. And they said it's clear, probably one of the things that kept you alive was the fact that you were in good shape, and had been going to the gym. So this is one of the things that helped you pull through. And so that that was a point in my favor. I also said Well, what what else can I be doing? They gave me a list of better foods to eat and fruits and vegetables and so on which I am trying making an effort to do anyway, cutting out the the Tommy burgers from from my daily meal. But I asked the doctor, I said Is there anything I might be doing or might have done that would have avoided this. And he said next time pick better parents, unfortunately, both of my parents and I think one of my grandparents had a history of heart disease. About 1012 years ago, I had kind of a precursor to the heart attack that I wasn't expecting. I had what I guess you could call almost a panic attack. In one of the bays that complete post, I was doing dailies in the middle of night myself, this would have been maybe 2005 or so 2006. And I got very, very dizzy, the whole room went to about a nine millimeter lens with black on the edges and got very out of focus. And everything sounded very different. It was a nice postproduction effect only it was my life. You know, I started swimming around in the room. And I didn't quite fall. But I kind of caught myself and sat in a chair. And I thought this is very bad. I wonder if this is a heart attack, or a precursor to a heart attack. And I talked it over with one of the guys from the lab and said, you know, hey, what do you think? And he says, don't take any chances with this. Go see your doctor immediately. And he said, I mean today, don't don't waste any time. I did go to see the doctor, they did check me out from top to bottom. And they said Your heart is absolutely fine. But the problem is you're way too stressed out. You're not getting enough sleep, you're working weird hours in the day. And you're highly highly stimulated on sugar and caffeine. At the time, I was taking ripped fuel, which is a you know, an energy pill that had a Federa in it, which you know, I think has since been banned. And then they unbanned it and then they banned it again. Yeah, that's really bad stuff. And I realized maybe that was a problem. The other interesting thing they they found out, you know, again, they did a series of tests. And they said, you know, you're an excellent, you're absolutely excellent shape. But you have some kidney damage. And I said, really? I wonder why that is. And he said I think number one, the ephedra is causing you to need to go to the bathroom more frequently and you're not doing it. Because you're so so much of a workaholic, you won't leave the room. You know, I considered myself as somebody who had an iron bladder, never realizing, oh, wait a minute, this is going to actually hurt my kidney, kidneys, I'm going to I'm going to back up. So I cut out the ephedra I cut down on the coffee. And I backed off a little bit and I did you know make bathroom breaks every couple of hours as part of the routine. And I was able to push that aside for a while. And I also realized I had a touch of asthma, which flares up now. And then my my brother and my father also had this was all kind of a precursor to the heart attack thing. But again, I think this is all a result of stress and overwork more than anything else. And what I did not realize back then 10 years ago is just the need to take more frequent breaks, get up and walk, smell the roses and maybe change the diet a little more.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And there's no question that all of those were very clear precursors to what would come so there's no question about that.

Marc Wielage

But yeah, that was an interesting episode. And I should have you know, in hindsight, if I have any regrets about this whole adventure, I should have paid more attention to that. Part of the problem, I guess with life is we think of ourselves as being indestructible. And just completely invulnerable, and I've always kind of believed I'm one of the strongest people I know. So to think that I could be knocked out by something this stupid. is bewildering to me the one thing that's It's a surprise is that this would happen at all? Because I thought, Oh no, no, this is going to happen to the other guy, this is never going to happen to me. One thing I got from several friends of mine, when they found out I had this heart attack in November, was it was they said, Jesus Christ Mark, you're one of the healthiest people we know. If it happens to you, it could happen to anybody. So they were they were all very complimentary that way.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And it will it it's funny too, because the definition of healthy in their instance was, well, you have a slim waistline, you do strength training three, four times a week and you're skinny. But that's no longer in my opinion, how we should be defining health. Because if you were to say to somebody, if you're on the phone with somebody, and they didn't see what you look like, and you described your day and said, Well, what I do is I work 12 to 14 hours, I'm in front of a computer, I regularly will have sugar, copious amounts of caffeine, I don't move much. I barely take breaks, I eat in front of my computer with the sandwich in one hand and a mouse in the other. And they say, Oh my God, dude, what? What is wrong with you? But then they saw you to be like, Oh, this guy is super crazy healthy. So I think that that's one one mindset that people need to get over is that health is based on appearance, because you clearly were not living a very healthy lifestyle. But because you had the slim waist line and you went to the gym three to four days a week, we automatically defined you as healthy.

Marc Wielage

Yeah, I have to say guilty as charged. You know, I was definitely I was definitely in that mindset.

Zack Arnold

But the part that I really, really want to hone in on is the fact that you were essentially sedentary. Yeah, for I mean, how much strength training did you actually do in a single session? Was it like 30 to 60 minutes at the gym,

Marc Wielage

I'd say more like 60 to 90 minutes. Okay,

Zack Arnold

Okay, so you're doing 60 to 90 minutes, which I'm sure had a lot to do with why you were able to survive that because that means that your heart, which is an actual muscle was probably very, very strong. So that probably has a lot to do with it.

Marc Wielage

In fact, they went out of their way to tell me, the joke they had was Mark, you probably have the heart of a 30 year old. Unfortunately, your veins are like a 75 year old. So that that's the problem. It's a cardiovascular vascular problem where it's, it's more about, I guess, figuring out a way to maybe thin out the blood cut down the contaminants get everything flowing the way it's supposed to.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and I think the the first area that I want to hit is where you just said the word flowing. The thing that's so important when you are sedentary. And if you were exercising for 60 to 90 minutes, on any given day, that means you were probably sedentary for maybe 21 and a half hours of your day outside of that time. Correct. You probably weren't doing much other than walking from your car, to your office, back to your car and so on.

Marc Wielage

Yeah, I think that's true. And I'm also the type of person I am i It's very possible, I was trying to overcompensate at the gym by overdoing it once I got there, knowing that I had maybe worked 1012 hours straight back in back in the post room. So, so I am guilty of that.

Zack Arnold

And then were you actually doing that at night? Or are you doing it in the morning? Oh, depends generally at night. Okay, well, it's interesting, because now I have several rabbit holes, and I can go down, I'm gonna give the legal disclaimer again, I'm not a doctor, I'm not advising anything from a medical perspective whatsoever. But this is something that I spend a lot of time researching and learning from other experts, and I'm very, very passionate about. And the first thing that I want to hit on is going back to that that idea of circulation and flowing. Because what's happening when you are sitting all day long, basically, your circulatory system slows way down, your metabolism plummets. You're burning like a calorie per minute or less over the course of an hour, you're burning roughly 60 calories. But more importantly, you're cutting off the circulation in your lower legs. And you're basically shutting off your lymphatic system. And my guess is you were sitting not at a standing workstation, right? Yes, yeah. So you were sitting all day long, 10 to 12 hours, which is the lifestyle that the vast majority of people in our industry lead. And frankly, the vast majority of our country's leading now because most jobs are sedentary in nature, and people are working under a lot of stress. So I would say that that was probably the first thing that would have contributed to it outside of just that genetics. Does that sound about right? Oh, that sounds pretty reasonable. And I think that the the next thing to think about which nobody ever considers, and this is an information that I've gotten from a woman named Katie Bowman, who is a bio mechanist expert and travels the world talking all about the biomechanics of the body, but also the biomechanics of the blood vessels. And it's really interesting that you brought up that you were somebody that did strength training, especially at night after sitting all day long. And I'm probably going to butcher this explanation because I have no formal medical background whatsoever. But from what I understand, the way that it works, is if you think about all the little blood vessels and capillaries and it's not just you have your giant arteries and your Giant veins, but they all branch out into all these tiny little branches to get all of the major and minor tissues in your body. And what's happening when you're sitting in your sedentary all day long. Imagine all those are like mini hoses. But imagine that they're being kinked. So all of these are being kinked, all day long. So now imagine this is one of her analogies that your blood vessel is like a hallway. So it's a straight hallway. And if you were to take a ball, say like a basketball and roll it down the hallway, you'd have no problems. But now imagine that you put a giant bend in the hallway, and you roll the basketball down the hallway, what's gonna happen, it's probably going to bang into one of the walls, and it's going to slow down. Make sense, right. So now imagine that it's a bowling ball, and it's 20 pounds, and you throw it as hard as possible, what's going to happen to the wall,

Marc Wielage

I guess it's going to smash right into the wall,

Zack Arnold

It's going to smash into the wall, and it's going to leave a dent. This dent is like your blood flowing through your veins, your arteries, your blood vessels, your capillaries. When you're sitting all day long, you're creating all of these kinks in your vessels, your blood is hitting the walls and bouncing back and forth like ping pong balls, and it's creating plaque. And when you all of a sudden go from sitting and doing nothing for 12 hours, and then you go to the gym at nine o'clock at night, you're throwing that bowling ball with a cannon over and over and over. Because it's not just you're standing up and walking to your TV to turn it on, or walking to your fridge, your blood is going like crazy, especially during strength training, all of your blood vessels and your everything in your in your circulatory system is all kinked up and stuck, because you've been sitting all day long. And this contributes to a tremendous amount of plaque buildup. So it sounds like it again, not a medical professional, but it certainly sounds like the the timing of your exercise could have contributed to this because you were sitting with no circulation gold, not obviously no circulation, but with low miles of circulation, especially in the lower half of your body. And then all of a sudden, you're going balls to the wall for 60 to 90 minutes. So that could be something that was contributing to it. But I'm also interested in you talking about diet. So I want to go a little bit deeper down that rabbit hole, because I would love to know, kind of what did your daily diet look like? And I know I've worked in post for 15 years. So I have a pretty good idea of the general diet. But you specifically, you mentioned Tommy burgers and you know,

Marc Wielage

and that's and that's just a joke. I think I have Tommy burgers twice a year. But I'm certainly guilty of eating more fast food than I should in the last 10 years or so. I've tried to go in a more healthy fast food direction. So maybe I'll get El Pollo Loco something like that poi loco, maybe I'll have a little rice and chicken. Or I'll I'll go to Subway and have have, you know, a turkey sandwich or something like that. So I mean, I've certainly tried to get away from fried foods, I've tried to go with baked foods and so on. I've tried to limit the amount of red meat I've been doing. Generally I only do red meat, I'd say at the most twice, twice a week. And I also tried to, especially nowadays since the heart attacks, and by the way, I had three heart attacks in one day, including one in the operating room, which is always a nice place to do it. I'm trying to do salads at least two or three days a week and I'm also beginning to embrace fruit. I'm taking baby steps at this because it's a tough change to do. I haven't been able to do fresh fruit, but I have done canned fruit. And I am I am doing that and enjoying that I'm and I'm certainly staying away from dairy products, and things like that. Anything that that my cardiologist specifically recommended against doing.

Zack Arnold

It's funny that you would mention Ken for my follow up question to that is Do you feel that your diet before the heart attack or even now was fairly high in sugar,

Marc Wielage

I think it used to be worse. And I've gradually tapered off sugar. Over the years, I was the kind of guy especially a complete post. My joke was for years in the 90s I did what I would call a poor man's Speedball which is vibrant and a Mountain Dew, to try to get me through long sessions. Over time, I realized how dangerous those could be. And I wound up just to getting the shakes and getting very nervous and having trouble sleeping and so on. So I've gradually cut back on the sugar and cut back on the caffeine somewhat, at least you know to a very manageable level. So that I know I don't have any problems sleeping. And I'm not running into any any issues with shaking and all that. Another. Another perhaps related problem that I have is I've got a mild arrhythmia, which I've had I think all my life and I wouldn't be surprised if that's antagonized by the caffeine. The caffeine I know is a real killer and sugar doesn't help

Zack Arnold

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because when you said that you combine Viva Rin and Mountain Dew, I just had a heart arrhythmia just thinking about it. I'm like, Oh my God, that's terrifying. Like I can't even like I have, I have a hard time calming down and speaking slowly, when I take no stimulants whatsoever, I can't even I would literally would be bouncing off the walls. If I combine those two,

Marc Wielage

then it sounds to me, Zack, that you're just naturally high, which is a good thing.

Zack Arnold

Well, it's funny because I spent years barely being able to get out of bed, lethargic, absolutely no energy whatsoever, because the stress of this industry was just pounding me into the ground. And really, I didn't understand at the time, how stress was affecting me how poor diet was affecting me. And that's kind of how the journey to create fitness and post began is realizing that there's got to be a better way to do this. Because the question that I always had in my mind is, how can I be this tired? I didn't do anything all day. You know, you sit there in front of the computer for 10 to 12 hours, and then you're done. And you're like, Wait, why am I so stinking exhausted? It's not like I went and ran a marathon today, I haven't done anything.

Marc Wielage

Well, I always argued that mental stress and mental exhaustion can be every bit as tiring as physical labor. It's not the same thing as digging ditches. Or, as a friend of mine used to say, slopping tar on the roof of a 12 storey building at high noon. It's not the same kind of stress, but it is still absolutely exhausting work. In fact, that's one reason why I do like exercising at the gym, because it gives me a chance to completely shake away all the mental stress. So when I walk in the door of the gym, suddenly it's 99% physical stress. And I can sort of put my brain on ice for an hour, hour and a half.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and I think that that's absolutely great. And I just want to clarify from what I was saying earlier about you sitting all day long in the doing exercise, the problem was not the exercise. The exercise is fantastic, whether it's in the morning, whether it's at night, the point that I'm trying to make to people is that you can't exercise away the negative effects of being sedentary all day long. Because what the mentality that most people the vast majority of people have had for the last 50 years or so is that it's all about eating less and exercising more and exercise is about calorie burn. And it's the amount of calorie burn versus how much food you're taking in. But nobody's really thinking about the effect that it's having on your hormones, the effect that it's having on your endorphins, the effect that it's having on your circulatory system. And this is an example where a year a guy that had a 32 inch waist looked great until a few months before your episode pretty much felt great was exercising three or four days a week, but you are not immune to having three heart attacks in the span of 24 hours. Right, exactly. And that's the cautionary tale that I really want people to understand, especially in this industry, because I'm sure that there are so many people that are saying yep, that's pretty much how I live. Yep, the viver in Yep, the five hour energy, and the burgers and the subway like that, that all sounds pretty par for the course for this industry.

Marc Wielage

Oh yeah. What one thing my cardiologist told me was he said, You've got to get out and walk more and take more breaks. So I am making an effort to do that I am trying to walk as much as a mile or two a day. And I've had to kind of ease myself into it, I've got to I've got some knee problems. But that's that's just age, I'm afraid. And but I but I have been able to do that. If anything, I've probably felt better in the last couple of months than I have in the previous three or four years. Part of that, I think is the stents that the doctors were able to put into my heart. But also, I think just being more aware that I can't take this health for granted. And I am a little more conscious, instead of sitting in the chair, literally without a break for 567 hours, I will deliberately get up and take a 10 minute break and walk around every couple of hours just to get the blood flowing back into my leg and, you know, you know, go outside and clear my head and relax for a second before heading back into into the grindstone. So that that kind of thing does help. Bearing in mind, though, that one of the issues with color, and I think to a lesser degree sound is it's a very concentration intensive business. And if you break that concentration, you you run the risk of screwing up the intent of the scene. So I try to find a natural break point where I can get away with walking out of the room. For example, I wouldn't necessarily do it in the middle of a five working on a five minute scene, but I would do it at the end of the five minute scene I'd say all right. We've now finished the sequence. We've we've gone to a new place in the show. Let's take a break here. And we'll come back in 10 minutes and pick it up and I'll do that whether I'm with us client or whether I'm by myself.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And I love that you brought up both of those things, both walking and taking breaks, because those are the cornerstone of the entire course that I'm building and what I'm trying to teach people in just the process of learning more about their health, I always say the very first step, no matter what you're doing, is just take at least 115 minute walking break per day. That's it. Like, that's always the first homework I give somebody is not, oh, you have to go out and get p90x, and you need to clean out your refrigerator. And you need to do all of these things. Live exactly the life that you have. But take a 15 minute walk this afternoon. That's it. And it makes makes it makes it a tremendous difference. It's just that simple. Yeah. And it sounds like you've had the same experience where you started doing that you said, Well, I am actually starting to feel better and more energetic and less stress. Would that be pretty accurate?

Marc Wielage

I would say yeah, it has helped. And I think it also relieves some of the monotony of what we do. I accept the tedium and the unknown, the intellectual challenge of being hyper focused for hours on end. But I'm also realizing, maybe that's not the best way to approach the job. In other words, I actually have to take a break and walk around and exercise not only for me, but also for the job, it helps give me a little more perspective on what I'm trying to do. And I used to be such a workaholic. I mean, I was a tremendous workaholic for 2025 years and posed to the point where I'd look on it as a sign of weakness, if you had to leave the bay, and even relieve yourself or, you know, grab a cup of coffee, or any of that, I wouldn't even do that. The joke we had a complete post was just bring me a bucket. And I'll take care of it under the console and keep going. So we would really, really consider it a badge of honor to slog through a session for 10 1214 hours, almost without a break. The only time I would ever take a break would be if the client needed a break.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And again, you are not medical study, you are one person but I really am starting to get a very complete picture pun intended, of what kind of led you to where you ended up being in the hospital three heart attacks. Because you you're now saying I'm a workaholic. And I would sit and stare at the monitor with intense laser focus for 10 to 14 hours a day, barely taking a water break, barely taking a bathroom break. Now this all makes complete sense.

Marc Wielage

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, in fact, I would, I would go so far as to generally bring a meal. So that I wouldn't have to take a break. And the most I would do is maybe on a real change or an act break or something like that, I'd run down the hall, grab my lunch, maybe throw it in the microwave, if it needed cooking, or if it was a cold sandwiches, bring it right back to the bay. And I would jump right back into work with my sandwich in one hand and my other hand operating the controls. So I would work and eat simultaneously. Now I'm beginning to kind of take a step back and go, you know, what would it be the end of the world if I did take 15 minutes out to just focus on my meal and not try to eat work at the same time?

Zack Arnold

Yeah, that's, that's a huge, huge point to make is there are plenty of studies now that are showing how unhealthy it is to actually work through lunch and sit at your desk and eat lunch. And we're one of the very few cultures on the planet that does this. Most European cultures will value their lunches and actually take like a two hour lunch every single day. And in America, it's like, What do you mean, you're taking a lunch break? What is that? Like? I just eat my lunch at my desk? Because I'm a hard worker.

Marc Wielage

Right? Exactly, exactly. I'm beginning to see the folly of that. I wish I had realized this 20 years ago. But hey, you live and learn.

Zack Arnold

And that's exactly why I'm trying to spread this message now is that I want people to have the information to think oh, all of these little things that I'm doing throughout the day are actually making a difference, for better or for worse, and they can lead down the road where you ended up as well. And another area that I really want to hit on that we haven't talked about a lot yet is going back to this idea of being so exhausted at the end of the day, even though you haven't really done anything. And you saying that you are so hyper focused, you are barely moving. What most people don't understand is that your brain even though it's only like three to 4% of your total body weight, it burns 20% of your total energy and your calories. And like you said we are have very monotonous, very creative, very focused work where you're just staring at a screen and you're making 1000s upon 1000s of micro decisions all day long. Should it be this color? Should I go up one pixel here? Should I go down one value here? It's decision after decision after decision, all of which burn calories. So you're you're basically on overdrive, but you're just sitting there sedentary with no circulation of your blood through Your body. And that's why you have all these negative effects. But you feel so stinking exhausted, because you are actually burning a ton of energy, you just don't think so because like you said, you're not digging ditches or putting tar on a roof.

Marc Wielage

Another another issue with the hyper focusing, we were talking about just being so aware of every single subtlety of the image. As we work, I got constant headaches, I spent 20 years where not a week went by when I was knocking back at least a half dozen aspirin. And I would say, especially in the last few years, I was probably doing two aspirin a day for different kinds of headaches, neck aches, back aches, and so on. And I have no doubt some of those problems relate to a head position back position, and the monotony of just sitting in the chair. But I think a lot of it was just a mental stress of being so focused on the screen to the point where the rest of the room disappeared.

Zack Arnold

Well, and what's ironic is probably one of the reasons that you weren't killed by a heart attack is because you were taking aspirin almost every day, because of your headaches.

Marc Wielage

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised that that was part of it. And when I was having heart attacks, and and decided it was in fact, a heart attack, the first thing I did was grab more aspirin. And later on when I was in recovery, the doctors told me that probably saved my life. They said, if you can take a couple of aspirin, within five minutes, 10 minutes of a heart attack that'll really help you recover. So they were convinced that that that was one of the things that made the difference, that in the fact that I was in pretty good shape, externally anyway, notwithstanding the blood vessels.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, of course. But just as far as your physical musculature and the strength of your heart as a muscle, I'm sure had a lot to do with it. Yeah. But what I'm really trying to do is like you said, You, you, you had this thing where it was a badge of honor, where I just felt like I if I just had to step away from my Bay for five minutes, I was a failure. And I am desperately trying to eradicate this mindset, because it is rampant in our industry. And I'm trying to show people that it is insanity to wear this badge of honor to say, Well, I haven't taken a bathroom break for eight hours, and I haven't eaten anything. I've been staring at a monitor. So what one thing that I want to know is, since you started making these changes, and taking more breaks and trying to move a little bit more, have you seen your productivity just plummet, and you're just getting nothing done now?

Marc Wielage

No. In fact, I would not say it's changed radically. But I would say it's helped my mood I was getting I was getting somewhat depressed, and just maybe a little lethargic. And I would say what the brakes. And the little extra exercise during the day has done for me is I think it's lighten the load a little bit. And I and I think if I had to do over again, what I probably would have done was just extended my shift another half hour. So for example, if I was booked for 10 hours, I would say well, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to stay for 10 and a half hours and just arrange for a couple of 15 minute breaks, maybe even go wild and have a half hour break in the middle somewhere and not try to just Blaze on through without a stop. And I think that's that's a very good tactic. One thing that's it's good, for me, at least was working with clients, very few clients have the stamina to sit in a color correction room for 10 1214 hours a day without falling over. Because it is tedious. It requires a lot of concentration. And it's a world that they don't deal with very often. The good thing is when you deal with clients, you almost have to take a break every two or three hours. My problem is is probably more dealing with sessions on my own when I have unsupervised projects. And then there is the risk that I'll work and work and work and work and then look up at the clock and go, Oh my God, it's midnight. I've been sitting here for 12 hours. And so one thing I've done is I built in reminders to my iPhone to pop up every so often and go, Hey, take a break. And I do this every so often. I wish I did it regularly. But at least I do it occasionally to remind myself, Hey, get out of the chair, walk around for 10 minutes or so. And then come back and look at the project with fresh eyes. And sometimes that helps.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and that's it's funny because that's one of the things that I teach in the course that I'm building is that something called a trigger. And what you can do is surround yourself with these triggers as part of the overall habit loop. Basically the way that habit works and science has proven basically that 95% of our activity throughout the day is habitual. It's not even things that we think about consciously, because if we had to think about everything we're doing consciously throughout the day, our brain would explode. It would be way too much overload. So 95% of Our day is habitual and just wired into our brain. So what I've done is learn how to hack that. And you start surrounding yourself with triggers all day long that are going to make you be more active and move more. And going so far as where you were saying, Well, I try, I was thinking that I would have added 30 minutes to my day, if I had it to do over again starting 20 years ago. And I will actually go one step further and say that once you start to move habitually throughout the day, you are more productive and faster at making decisions, when you're in those focus modes, that you actually get your work done quicker. And this, again, has been proven by research and by science, that if you just focused on one specific task for a period of time, and the the sweet spot that they have proven is 52 minutes to focus on. And then 17 minutes off, if you do it for that period of time over the course of the day, you are going to be more productive and be done faster. So what I've actually found, and I've quantified the amount of time that has taken me to edit scenes edit dailies to do usual tasks. And the more that I move, and the more that I take breaks, while making sure that I'm very focused, and only doing one task when I'm in focus mode, I'm getting my work done in like 30 to 40% Less time, which means that three, four years ago, when I was doing a day's worth of dailies, it was a 12 hour day. Now it's like an eight hour day and I'm going home at seven o'clock and putting my kids to bed. And people are looking at me thinking, Well, why are you leaving so early, like the joke was always Oh, having a half day today when you're leaving at like 730 at night, which to me is absurd. But I have actually found for myself that the more that I move, and the more that I take these focused time blocks, the less I have to worry about having these long days and adding extra time because I'm actually more productive.

Marc Wielage

Well, that certainly sounds like a healthier way to go than my method, which was just to consume massive, massive amounts of sugar and caffeine to keep me hyper and move through the session quickly that way. And believe me there, there were many days when I could actually get 13 or 14 hours of work done in 12 hours. But the problem is I'd come out of there, like somebody who just been through a World War, you know, just just shaking and freaked out and you know, very, very uncomfortable and so on.

Zack Arnold

Absolutely. And I've been there as well. I'm a self proclaimed workaholic, still am to this day. And I've learned to manage it on a daily basis, much better. But I'm glad you brought up the idea of doing a marathon session for 14 hours getting amazing amounts of work done that you really it's not even human, but then you walk away and you're literally shaking, I've had those days, where you're in the zone, you feel like Time has stopped. And you're just literally you just you feel like you're Mozart composing a symphony. But then when you're done and all of a sudden the clouds lift, you're physically shaking, it feels awkward just to stand up straight, because you've been hunched over all day long. And you can't even focus and you can barely remember your name, I'm sure you've been there before.

Marc Wielage

Oh, very much so. And I've also had the opposite where no matter how much caffeine and sugar and so on that I consumed during the day, no matter how few breaks I took, by the time the project finished at the end of that day, I was absolutely exhausted. And I wanted to put in a reference to an old pal of mine from the old days. Haskell Wexler, the famous cinematographer. And Haskell, you know, had this and still has, I guess, a very important movement called 12, on 12 off, where he was lobbying for production people to only quote unquote, work 12 hours during the day and then have 12 hours off until the next time, they had to come back to the set. And unfortunately, for those of us in post, there is no movement for post production people. And I can tell you, I think maybe the worst offender of that, that problem of working more than 12 hours is the visual effects business. I've watched my brothers and visual effects literally work 16 1819 hours a day, six or seven days a week when they are right on top of a deadline for a major motion picture. And when I worked for synthasite, about 10 years ago, that we had, we had visual effects artists, literally sleeping under their desks, so that they would still be there in the morning at the crack of dawn, to jump back into the fray and continue working on their projects, getting very, very little sleep, you know, managing to create massive amounts of work. My objection to that is the longer you stay and the less sleep you get. It's not just a question of productivity, you will start to you also start making more mistakes. I've certainly been through that in the color correction end of it, where I started looking at the work I did 10 hours ago towards the end of the shift and I go oh my god, how did I let that go? Why didn't I fix this? Now we're going to have to take time to get this done. And I realized to my chagrin, there is a point of diminishing returns. It's not just a About how many hours you sit in a chair and stare at the screen. It's also a question of how mentally alert you are and how really functional you are. Just because just because you're sitting in the chair doesn't mean the work is really good.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, absolutely. And that's another area that I talk about with productivity is what kind of going back to the analogy or the situation of you spending 1314 hours a day being in the zone. For that one day, you got a crap ton of work done. But now imagine trying to do that over the course of 30 days. And if you look at the way that that affects your productivity, the next day, the next day, the next day, science will clearly show that in the course of those 30 days, if you were to try and maintain that energy and that focus and get three to four hours of sleep a night and sleep under your desk, if you were to do that for 30 days straight, or take somebody that's moving throughout the day, that's getting seven, eight hours of sleep a night that's taking plenty of breaks, they may not get as much done on day one. But over the course of 30 days, they're going to annihilate the one that is pushing themselves and killing themselves because they're, they're pacing themselves. It's kind of like a racecar driver, the people that win the race in like in NASCAR. And I don't know a lot about NASCAR. But I know enough about it. To know that if you just put the pedal to the metal and you push your car as fast as it will go, you're not going to make it 300 laps around the track, your car is going to disintegrate into nothing. It's the ones that have smart pit crews know when to time their brakes know when to press the pedal to the metal on when to step off of it. It's the smart drivers that win not the fastest, hardest pushing drivers

Marc Wielage

that does make sense working smarter not not not more, working faster,

Zack Arnold

working smarter, not harder is really what I'm all about is showing people that it's not about how hard you push yourself. It's about how you manage your day so that you don't have these types of issues over longer periods where like you said, you're pounding sugar and caffeine and you're still exhausted at the end of the day. Because you might get a ton of work done in those 14 hours. But the next day, you're going to be useless. And science has also proven that if you get less than seven hours of sleep per night, that is the equivalent from a cognitive level is having a blood alcohol level of point one. So would you show up to work with a point one blood alcohol level thinking that you're going to do good solid work that day? Probably not right?

Marc Wielage

I agree. And the doctors doctors also told me one of my few saving graces is in addition to trying to work out three or four days a week. I'm totally a nonsmoker, non drinker, zero drugs except for the massive amounts of aspirin and caffeine. They said that helped. And and I know that particularly smoking is a an insidious disease. Unfortunately, both my parents were done in by smoking and drinking during their lives. But they were still older than I was when either of them had a heart attack, which is a concern.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And like you said, there's a lot of genetic disposition in this entire picture as well. So I can understand that. But I certainly feel like after painting a much clearer picture of your day, and your lifestyle and your routine for the next last 20 to 30 years. There's a lot of indicators that it was there was a lot more environment than just oh, well, this these are the hands I was dealt genetically, it sounds like there's a lot of environmental factors that factored into it as well.

Marc Wielage

Oh, yeah. Yeah, in looking back, I can certainly see things I would have done differently and things I would have done better. And, and high on that list would have just been walk a little more and take a few more breaks, and try to cut down on the stress. And unfortunately, as my friends remind me, I'm kind of a stress addict. And you know, for many, many years, I felt like the stress was sort of the high I got from the experience. And so I kind of craved that. And it's difficult to push that away and go no, no, no, I've got to not get stressed out. I've got to just worry about the results. And not not worry about, you know how frenetic I'm getting during the during the job.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And that's when you say that you're a stress junkie. Yeah, it's not just this mental thing. It's an actual physical addition. You're an adrenaline junkie. That's what's happening. Yeah, this is something that I went through for years, where you need the stress and you need the fire to get the work done. I was I would literally not spend days cutting my dailies, I would let daily sit there. So I would get to the point where I had a ridiculous amount of work to do in a short period of time. And then I would just cut like a madman to get it all done. But that's because I needed the adrenaline rush. And I needed from a physical chemical perspective, I needed that to be able to function and that's what it's like living as a workaholic is you feed off of that stress, but that stress slowly kills you, which is why I've been down this road for the last 10 years trying to figure out from a biological and chemical perspective what's actually happening and how do I reverse it? Because I found out that those Things are not very good for me. And I didn't want to end up in a similar position that you've been 20 3040 years from now.

Marc Wielage

Oh, yeah, yeah, believe me, believe me, that is no fun. I guess the question for the show is, how do you achieve a balance between getting the work done and not driving your body into the ground?

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And that's exactly what the online course that I built is all about is finding a way to still be able to get the 10 to 12 hours of work done a day, to have the laser sharp focus, but also walk away at the end of it and feel like man, I feel pretty good, I've got a lot of energy, and I can go home to my family. And I can play with my kids a little bit. And I can smile and not feel totally overwhelmed. And it really is just based around moving more throughout the day, but it not affecting your productivity in a negative way, but affecting it in a positive way. So that's really what my passion is now is just how to reshape your environment, how to reshape your mindset and your psychology. So you're not just sitting there in front of the monitors for 14 straight hours thinking, Oh, I haven't gone to the bathroom since this morning. Like, none of that is good, short or long term.

Marc Wielage

And I have to say, trying to find a balance in your life, where you're happy with the amount of work you're doing. And you're also happy with the personal time you have for yourself and your family and your friends. And also being concerned about your own health. Trying to balance those is tough, especially for the freelance person with me, the work kind of comes in in clumps. So I might go through a three or four week period where I'm absolutely jammed, working, you know, 14 1516 hours a day, followed by three weeks of absolutely nothing. And then the cycle repeats itself. So again, trying to figure out that balance is a real, real problem for me.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, absolutely. And that is the endless quest that I am on. That is my holy grail life balance is a solution that I'm trying to come up with and teach others how to find. So yes, it is elusive. And we are all trying to figure it out. And I'm not just saying oh, man, like, how do you find the balance? I'm actually spending 12 to 14 hours a day trying to find the balance trying to figure it out? What is the formula? What is the equation? I feel like in my own life, I've been pretty successful so far. But there's always more to learn and more to do. So that having been said, I have one final question. And then I want to let you go on and be respectful of your time. But when you were in this could be a rather difficult question and a personal question. So if you don't, if you're not comfortable answering it, I totally understand

Marc Wielage

Oh, I'm been stupid. I'll answer anything nice. I like to hear it. And if I can't come up with the truth, I'll make up something great.

Zack Arnold

So when you were at the hospital, and you had that moment where you bang through the double doors, and you saw the six surgeons, was there any part of you that was thinking, Man, this was totally worth it if I die right now, because I got to sit in a dark room for 14 hours a day and color stuff.

Marc Wielage

No, I was never thinking about that. It was it was more about what was a couple of things. Number one, I was absolutely unafraid to die. I was ready to go, I was gonna die at that moment. I go, Oh, well, I did the best I can. And I think I left I think I lived a pretty good life. And I think I tried to be nice to people. And I think I tried to do the right thing 90% of the time. So I was absolutely unafraid of death, not a big fan of pain. The pain is much more of a factor to me than the actual death. And it was an interesting experience to me, because I think nobody really knows how they're going to react to imminent death until they're really confronted with it. And I'm glad to say that it didn't faze me, it didn't frighten me. And I was ready to go if if that's what what it was going to, you know what, what was going to happen? At the same time, I didn't want to die. I've, you know, I definitely would fight against it if I could. And in fact, I was cracking jokes with the nurses and the other technicians and so on, as they were sticking needles in me and attaching various meters and you know, knobs and dials all around and everything. So and by the way, after having worked on sitcoms for 25 or 30 years, I can tell you, the people in a cardiology room are really bad audience. They don't laugh at anything. Nothing. Absolutely no jokes. We need a lot of sweetening and post to get the right amount of laughs in there. But I gotta say they were tremendous people. And I I wouldn't say I enjoyed the experience, but it was a sobering experience at putting things in perspective. But I did not go into the operating room thinking oh, I regret my life. I should have done this. I shouldn't have done that. My thinking is, alright, I'm going to draw a line in the sand from here on. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to try a different way and see if I can live a little more healthy from here on?

Zack Arnold

Well, then I, first of all, I'm going to commend you on the choices you've made in your life. Because to be at the point where you're literally at death's door, no pun intended, you were literally at the door of death and thinking, I don't regret the life that I've lived. That takes a tremendous amount of just positive choices, treating people well, doing the right thing. So that I commend you on. I think that's, that's huge, because most people would not have that type of experience. So I think that says a lot about your character and you as a person, but what I what I want the audience to walk away with today, it's just one question. And it's an uncomfortable question. And I will ask this in my live seminars as well, because this is a question that I posed to myself 10 years ago, when I was dealing with the suicidal depression that I mentioned a little bit earlier in the show. But given all the things that you've talked about, you have a very common lifestyle for the audience's listening to this today. This is a question I asked myself, and this is a question I think that people listening should ask themselves, is the service that you're providing right now worth dying for? And if the answer is no, you need to start thinking about what are the changes that I need to make in my life to lessen the probability that the job is going to kill me because the job is killing you? If you're living the type of lifestyle that's similar to what you mentioned today? So if that's the answer to the question is no, of course, what I'm doing isn't worth dying for. You need to start thinking about ways to make small changes in your life to make sure that you aren't led down the same path. So yeah,

Marc Wielage

I agree with that. 100%. Certainly.

Zack Arnold

Well, then that having been said, I want to be respectful of your time, because we've been on for just about an hour and I want to let you go. But this has been tremendously inspiring to me personally. And I hope it's been inspiring to my audience as well. And I'm more than happy to work with you further and help you find that elusive balance and figure out what you can do during the course of a day to be more active and have more energy and not just be so sedentary because that is now my life's passion. So I'm more than happy to share that with you.

Marc Wielage

Great. Thank you, Zack.

Zack Arnold

All right, well, this has been a pleasure. So thank you so much for being on.

Marc Wielage

Alright, same to you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai