Posted by Smalls at adsl-67-122-161-208.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net on December 08, 2003 at 01:11:58:
In Reply to: Can I Get You Your Coffee, Sir? posted by ISNANE on December 08, 2003 at 00:49:57:
It depends...
Of course, doing it through a large college with a big alumni base is the best way, taking a summer to live in NY or LA and pick up a job from a person from your school...
But there's a lot of ways. Are you in a big enough town for there to be the occasional indie film shooting? Sometimes just putting in an application to be a PA with whatever indies are shooting locally is a good way to build up experience and contacts.
Ultimately, it's all about contacts and/or being in the right place at the right time... think about who you know or your friends know that could help you get an internship on what.
Broaden your horizons, too, anything other than news on television could build you good experience shooting... commericals, local PBS stuff, all those sorts of things need interns and assistants and such.
Hell, I worked on a movie where... the interns were... two Bosnian pot dealers who just happened to live near where we were shooting on the first day, when the AD realized we were woefully understaffed for the purposes of locking down streets. The 2nd 2nd just said to them "hey guys... wanna work on a movie for free food? You don't look like you're doing anything anyway..."
They stole some of the radio gear but they were sets of hands when we needed them and... one of them ended up moving to NYC to be a PA, oddly enough.
And... hopefully, you do enough of that stuff, you make a friend who can find you the type of job you were talking about above.
Though if you live NYCish or LAish, it helps. Though maybe not so much NYC anymore...
I've got a good friend of mine, really good young filmmaker, sitting in Brooklyn with a half-broken Steenbeck editing machine, getting no work in the industry and I finally got him to admit, half-sarcastically, that:
"The New York film scene is a myth, like Santa Claus or the Sasquatch."
Mike