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(Page 4 of 6 pages for this article « First  <  2 3 4 5 6 >)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

How to Break Into the Entertainment Biz

If you’ve got talent, a good attitude and basic barista skills, you’ll do okay

Showbiz Marketing 101

As a camera assistant, include the following on your resume:

1. Name, address and phone number, in big easy-to-read letters
2. Your job title, right up front
3. One page containing, in columns, the title of each project, the production company, the name of the DP, and the names of everyone on the camera crew higher than you, broken down by project type (features, commercials, etc.)
4. Preferred coffee blend, grind, brewing time and average froth height.

Your name and job title, etc., need to be big and bold. People don’t want to spend a lot of time deciphering resumes. Tell them right up front what you are and where to reach you. Keep the resume down to one single-sided sheet so it’s fast and easy to read. Don’t use fancy fonts or italics.

The coffee thing was a joke. You can put it on there if you want, and if nothing else you will certainly be remembered. That’s not a bad thing at all. Camera assistants see a lot of resumes. You need to stick in their memories somehow.

Pick one job title and stick with it. “Jane Doe, Second Camera Assistant” has a chance of getting hired. “John Smith, Second Camera Assistant, Grip, Boom Operator and Production Assistant” doesn’t stand a chance. Second camera assistant is a position of great responsibility, and someone who also has to work as a production assistant to make ends meet obviously isn’t very experienced. And someone who does many jobs does none of them well, or at least that’s the way someone will feel when they read your resume. If you bill yourself as a second camera assistant, and that alone, you will be taken much more seriously. The ability to brew killer espresso will be assumed.

People won’t hire people they don’t know, and the next best thing to knowing you is recognizing that you’ve worked with someone they know. Everyone knows everyone else, so the more camera crew names you put on your resume the more likely someone will see you’ve worked with someone they respect. Inevitably they’ll see you’ve made coffee for someone whose tastes they share and they’ll try you out.

Don’t bother listing directors, producers, etc. Camera people hire camera people. They don’t care who the director was, they only want to see that you worked successfully with their friend, the most demanding and caffeinated first camera assistant in town.

Don’t list student projects if you can avoid it. If there’s a chance a student project will be seen on TV, re-label it a “TV special” or “TV movie.” Nobody wants someone whose experience is only on student projects. You don’t learn how to do the job while working on a student project. You don’t learn how many scoops of Medaglia D’oro in a grandé americano while working in academia. You have to work under a seasoned first camera assistant on “real” projects in order to be “broken in.” There’s a tremendous amount of on-the-job instruction that you get in the real world, where a lot of money is on the line, that you won’t get on a student film, where speed and efficiency are NOT the bottom line. Everything changes when you’re getting a paycheck and handling someone else’s raw stock that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everything changes when every extra second you spend hunting down a fresh film magazine costs someone dozens of dollars. If the first assistant likes almond in his cappuccino but the DP likes his straight, you’d better not make a mistake.

(Page 4 of 6 pages for this article « First  <  2 3 4 5 6 >)


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