Lately we’ve been bringing up your energy and confidence and how these things will lead to you making that critical jump from outside the industry to being on set. Once you’re on set, how will those things help you build a career?
If you can get really good at networking and making relationships, you will move fast in the film industry. This is both a simple and complicated thing to do. Knowing when to ask questions, what kinds of questions to ask, when the right time is to message people for more work, all of these things will have a drastic effect on your success as you’re trying to gain mentors and higher level work. You can make this MUCH easier for yourself just by having a positive, inquisitive attitude in all your conversations.
Asking intelligent questions of professionals, questions that show you’re making an effort on your own to understand the work, is how you’ll want to do this. After you’ve been on some shoots, it will become more obvious what questions like this are. Similarly, you’ll start to figure out when there are good times to strike up a conversation with professionals; you’ll have a sense for when lulls in the workflow are coming up for you and the people you want to be talking to.
Have genuine interest in what they’re doing and be appreciative of the fact that they’re taking the time and energy to share their experience with you, because they’ve worked hard to get it. Keep in mind that these are people who might pass work to you once you have enough experience, but be sure to never treat them as job dispensing machines.
As usual, the most important thing is to just get on set. It doesn’t matter if you stumble and make mistakes, what matters is getting on shoots, getting comfortable with the flow and lingo and the environment, and being around professionals as soon as possible!
