Even through this blog is named “Finding Work After Film School,” I’ve actually found my first job, on a professional set, while I was in Film School. It happened during the two last months, while nothing was going on. I spent most of the last two months mainly working on school graduates sets as a Production Sound Mixer. Sometime in December 08, I got a call from Will Meadows, sound instructor at VFS, about a production needing a boom operator.

So I did some follow up and ended up working with Iatse 891 Sound Mixer, Peter Kepkay, on a short feature. The crew was composed of industry professionals and the actors were also well known, so the experience was certainly amazing whatever what, even through it was clearly a free job.

So the show started and I ended up learning everything once again, not to say that everything from film school was useless, but since each set is different you always have to adapt to it and learn how it works. I have to say that Peter [Kepkay] was a great teacher and helped me a lot during this experience but even through he taught me well, I still made some mistakes and learned quite a lot from them. By the way, if there is one thing that you learn is that on set people like to have fun, so if you do a “funny” mistake you’ll hear about it quite a lot.

Anyhow, the experience was a really challenging once since on my first real time out, I had to boom op, which I had never done before (I had mainly some Sound Mixing experience), and I had to do so with two camera, which ended up being a very interesting first time out experience.

So has the days went by, I started to learn more and more about how the site was running. I realized that most of what we learned in school was applied in a very different way. Everything had to be much faster. You have schedules, a shot list, and things have to happen during that time otherwise it creates quite a lot of issues. For example, the AD didn’t go through the whole process that you learn  in film school. Even if the process work probably better, it just takes too long, so they simply cut some points and they expect other departments to be ready, without the AD having to mention it. It becomes something that you know you have to do, without being told to do. After speaking with other ADs in the industry, I’ve actually been told that it’s an industry wide practice. Nobody has time to take you by the hand and guide you because time is money, so things are moving pretty quickly on the set.

There is quite a lot that is different from what you learn in film school, so I can’t go in every detail, but what I’ve learned pretty quickly is that I had to leave my ego at the door each day. I’ve wrote an article about this a few days ago, named Don’t assume you know everything. If you have an ego on set and people try to teach you something, it becomes frustrating for them and probably for you too and create some frustration that isn’t needed or desired. You’re already working long hours and doing quite a lot of work, so people are getting tired rapidly and it can be very easy to spark something that you do not want to see. Be respectful and learn, and say thanks, you have no idea what a simple “thank you” can do for you. Just imagine being ask things all day and then someone says thank you to you, it just makes your day.

At the end of the shoot, I got out with a lot more than I could imagine. I got out with contacts, friends, knowledge and the satisfaction or having worked with some fantastic people, which I hope to work with again.

Never underestimate the work that you’ll be doing for free. Since it’s what you’ll probably be doing ater film school, I’m done, now what?, you have to see the good side of it.