Summerlin-area residents tackle unusual jobs

Jobs are changing. It’s no longer the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker fodder. Summerlin-area resident Scott Land is a puppeteer at the top of his game; Alan Beck of Desert Shores is a pyrotechnic assistant for the “Tournament of Kings” show at the Excalibur; and Summerlin-area resident Rachel Salyer works from home as a transcriptionist, writing closed captions for YouTube and various shows.

Puppeteer pulls the strings on his career path

Summerlin-area resident Scott Land is a puppeteer at the top of his game. In New York City, he worked with comedian Gilbert Gottfried and made puppets of Donald Trump and President Barack Obama for “The Trump Diaries,” a Vanity Fair podcast. Use of the latter puppet was recorded by actor Morgan Freeman on his iPhone. Freeman then sent it to the White House.

“Twenty minutes later, he came up and showed me the return text: ‘I love it.’ He said it was the president (who sent it), but I don’t know for sure,” Land said.

When Dick Van Dyke turned 90, one of Land’s marionettes, a miniature of the actor, was used in a two-hour TV special shot at Disneyland.

“When it came out and started dancing, he (Van Dyke) came out and danced with it, and the crowd went crazy,” Land said. “The YouTube video of him has 38 million hits.”

Land began puppeteering when he was 10, inspired by a show he’d seen at a fair. He began performing at kids’ parties at 12. Puppetering helped put him through UCLA, followed by working with traveling shows.

He came to Las Vegas for a summer run of Carnivale at The Venetian.

It takes three to four months to create a puppet. It starts with sculpting the head in clay, then making a mold. The mouth, eyes and eyebrows are crafted of wood and give the character personality and allow the puppet to come alive.

“You don’t want to add too much movement, just enough,” he warned. “Otherwise, it gets too busy.”

His wife, Lisa, helps paint the head and moving parts. Then the body is added, clothed and the whole thing wired up. Internal springs allow the mouth to go back to being shut. Magnets allow the puppet to pick up an object. The hardest part, he said, is finding what the puppet can do. Land practices in front of a mirror for hours to best exploit each one’s idiosyncrasies.

“We’re not used to seeing things move that are artistic,” Land said of his craft. “And if it’s compelling and if it’s done well, it’ll touch an audience. This takes you back to when you were a kid.”

Computer programmer turned pyrotechnic assistant

No story on unusual jobs in Las Vegas is complete without someone who works on the Strip. Alan Beck of Desert Shores is a pyrotechnic assistant for the “Tournament of Kings” dinner show at the Excalibur, something he’s been doing for about 10 years.

Before that, he was a computer programmer, living in California. After 25 years, he was laid off.

Stagehand work brought him to Las Vegas in 1979. A year later, he learned of a job opening and jumped at it — the chance to work with pyrotechnics.

“I thought, ‘That’d be neat,’ ” he said. “I went down to the union hall and (put in for it). For once in my life, I got lucky.”

His duties include mixing the powders, building the loads (the canisters that hold the powder), attaching ignition devices, setting up the pots into which the loads go and cleaning the equipment to ensure it functions properly.

Safety is paramount. Everything is double-checked.

Beck or his supervisor, Todd VanDervoort, “fires” the show from a control booth that overlooks the action. Firing the efforts involves turning a key on the board.

Beck said he’s always vigilant during the show.

“If something goes wrong, we take care of that,” he said. “When it’s the fire act, I mean, he’s shooting fire out of the end of his arm, so there’s the potential for something to go wrong. And working the horses, they spook real easy, so you have to be careful in that respect. You always have to be vigilant and know what’s going on.”

He said there really isn’t a tough part to the job.

“That’s why I enjoy doing it so much,” he said.

Working with words

Rachel Salyer, 26, said most of what she does in closed captioning includes TV shows, movies and “education stuff, like if a school wants to put something online for the deaf and hard of hearing, or people who prefer to read it again to aid learning.”

“And nature documentaries,” she added. “They’re fun. I enjoy doing those.”

As an independent contractor for a couple of service companies such as Rev, she looks over the list of projects, noting their audio feed time, deadline and pay scale. She chooses which ones she wants to do.

Salyer boasts a typing speed of 120 words per minute with 98 percent accuracy. She selects projects that pay from 60 cents to $2 per minute. One minute of audio feed time can equate to three to five minutes of work to transcribe it.

She began about four years ago, works about 30 hours a week and often finds it an education worthy of cramming for “Jeopardy!”

“I have a lot of random knowledge about stuff that will never apply to my life,” Salyer joked.

Salyer’s job isn’t always easy: One time, her computer died in the middle of a job, two hours before her deadline. She raced to Best Buy to grab a replacement, raced back home to set it up and managed to finish on time.

“I will never do committee meetings again,” she said. “They’re the worst. You can barely hear them, they say ‘like’ every second word, and there are tons of speakers. And those accents.”

She said she also used to transcribe shareholders meetings and was amazed at the speakers.

“How in the world they got to where they are in their companies when they can barely put a sentence together is beyond me,” she said.

Salyer said the job includes only random moments of stress. She’ll awaken in the middle of the night, afraid she’s missed a deadline.

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.