Please sing that title to the tune of “Free Fallin'” by Tom Petty. Thank you.
I finished my internship up two weeks ago. Finally I got a called from the people at Allied Pixel to be a production assistant for a shoot this Friday. I was working with a crew from San Francisco, who had come in to shoot something for a company called SAP (I don’t know what they do, nor do I care to).
My role wasn’t a very big one. Allied Pixel gave me one of their van, a few pieces of equipment, and I was to take those to the set then help out. On set, I had even less to do than I did on my shoots as an intern. However, the promise of a paycheck was quite nice.
I think those of us doing production work should definitely heed the words from Annie’s post: Look alive. I didn’t have much to do, after helping the grip and the gaffer set up some C-stands and light stands. However, they realized they needed blue gels for the lights, and didn’t have them. I offered to drive back to Allied Pixel and grab some. When I got back, I was told I “saved the shoot”.
The most difficult thing, at least for me, going from Newhouse to the real world is not getting to be “the man in charge”. At school, I was always in creative, decision-making roles, either directing or as a DP or producing. It’s tough watching people get to do those things with the camera, and I have to run crowd control so people walking by don’t mess up the audio. But the person doing the gaffing is a prominent DP in the Philadelphia market, and I believe I made a good impression on him, and that might lead to more work. If the rest of you are like me, it’s tough to put a ton of enthusiasm into the little jobs on set, but like Annie said in her post, those little things are what impress the people who will give you that next job.