I got a day of work with a production company called Ignition Films through the DP I was supposed to do my mentorship with. Since he never had the time to do the mentorship, he passed my name along to some of his DP friends and so far that has turned into one day of work for me. Ignition Films I guess works sometimes for a company called Liquid Theory and they do a lot of stuff for MTV. A DP from Ignition was shooting the 2 stars of MTV’s Teen Wolf in an interview like setting, and they were talking a little bit about season 1 of Teen Wolf and about the upcoming season. The DP from Ignition needed a PA/camera assistant for the shoot so I got the call. It was an easy day, about 6 hours of work, and I got $100 to do it.
The first thing I had to do was go to Ignition Films and pick up all of the equipment for the shoot. The production manager gathered all the equipment that the DP wanted, I loaded it into the cargo van, and off I went. I was to meet the DP at the shooting location, unload the van, and help him set up for the shoot. I unloaded everything I knew the DP needed before he even arrived at the shoot, and then unloaded anything else he requested. It was a simple shoot, in a very small room, and there wasn’t too much that needed to be done. The DP threw up some lights, set up the camera, and my main task was to somehow rig up some C-stands to hold up two framed Teen Wolf posters that were to be set up behind the actors. Once everything was set up the whole shoot took about 10 minutes and we took everything down and loaded the cargo van back up.
While the job was short and simple and there was limited opportunity to show myself to be a super PA I still got a lot out of the whole experience. By talking with the DP he learned that I was interested in camera work, and since we were waiting around for a little while for the stars of Teen Wolf he used that time to show me the camera. He was shooting on a Sony F900, a camera I was unfamiliar with, so he walked me through all the buttons/settings etc. He had me take the camera off the tripod and put it back on a few times, had me take the battery on and off, and I did the same with the lens. At the end of the shoot he had me put the camera away. So just by telling him I was interested in camera work, I got a little hands on experience. So at the end of the day, even if the most impressive thing you can do is not have to ask what 1/4 CTO is when the DP asks for it, if you can find the time to talk to the person on set who is doing the job that you want to do, then you are going to get something out of the whole experience. Chances are if they aren’t too busy they will be willing to talk to you.
When I returned with the cargo van to Ignition Films the production manager was not there to help me put the equipment away. When she had gathered all of the equipment I had paid very close attention to where she got everything from, in case I ever got work from her again. This came in handy when I returned to the offices and she was not around. I am sure I could have just left all of the equipment in a nice organized pile and that would have been fine, but I decided to go ahead and take the extra step and put everything away (hopefully in the right place). I put the audio kit away, unloaded the battery charger, plugged it in and put all the batteries on it to charge, put the unused tapes away, and put the monitor away. The one piece of equipment that I hadn’t seen the PM get from the equipment room was the camera, because that had been in her car. I noticed a locked shelving unit that had 2 other camera bags in it, and then I discovered that one of the keys on the keychain that the cargo van key was on opened this shelving unit. So I went ahead and put the camera away too. They may never know that I was the one who put all the equipment away, but, at least I still took that extra step to try to impress these people.
So, the overall lesson from this experience, talk to people on set, you are likely to learn something, and always look for those extra little ways to impress people, even if it may go unnoticed.
As a side note, I did get a call from Ignition for another day of PA work, but, I had to turn down the offer because I was already working that week (if only that happened more often).