Read on, but the question in many people's minds is, "Will I be any good at these behind-the-scenes jobs?"
Here is the answer.
Hell yes!
But actually I'm serious. It is so much about your approach, then if you have the innate knowledge.
See, everyone starts with no knowledge of anything, in our business.
Even if you just came out of film school, you still know very little.
Everyone learns by doing! So, the question becomes, how will you approach the job?
Will you talk to others who are great at the job? Will you hang out at industry conferences to learn more about it? Will you subscribe to industry mags and learn all you can?
When I started I would hang out at camera houses and memorize the names of everything in there. I'd be like, "Oh, the baby legs? That's over there!"
When someone came through the door, I'd go up to them and ask them "What do you do in the business?"
Did I come across as overly eager? Yeah. But who cares?
I met some people I work with today. Yeah, that's cool to be wanting to learn everything you can.
Contrast that, with a story the DIT told me yesterday. She had her head down on the table. I asked her, "What's wrong? Are you OK?"
She goes, "Oh, I'm just tired. I was up all night fixing someone else's mistakes."
Apparently, she was helping out a Director friend on his music video, who had hired an inexperienced DIT. (Digital Information Tech). They work with the coloring of the footage as it's shot. Apparently, it was all very dark.
So, she is the editor on this.
She had a conversation with this inexperienced guy and he's like, "Yeah, I loaded it in there and it's fine.)
But he doesn't know the basics. (He didn't even know what transcoding was.)
So, apparently he's not only inexperienced, but also doesn't care to learn how to do his job well.
Here's the lesson:
YOU WILL BE A SUPERSTAR IF YOU GIVE A CRAP AND LEARN HOW TO DO A GREAT JOB. Seriously, if this guy can get work at $600/day, you can approach it like I show you, and learn stuff really completely and then knock everyone's socks off.
Will you make mistakes? Yes! I did!
But, you'll make them when you're working on lower level stuff.
Talk to you soon!
Janet
