Getting foot in the door

[Stephen Smith]

I would look into a internship. You’ll gain real world experience and a better reel. Plus, it will give you “inside” contacts. If your good and if a job opening becomes available you will most likely get it. Best of Luck.

Salt Lake Video

Check out my DVD Money Making Graphics & Effects for Final Cut Studio 2

[Grinner Hester]

News stations don’t snub jr collegers, they require them.
You have already gotten your foot in the door, you just don’t know it yet.
Make an awesome demo reel with those tools you have been mastering. Master them now that I stroked your ego enough to think you actually have. Your reel and your talent is what will be purchased by the hour… not your education. It’s not something that will usually come up in an interview and if it should, it’s because you are letting the conversation drag. Half the gig of an editor is people skills. You will have to sell yourself to get that first minumum wage gig. You’ll sell yourself again when you leave that place.
You’ll be selling edits on the fly and not even knowing it. Often your job will be to say no without using the word No and concencing the client it was their idea not to do it. This is what your job will be.
May as well start with where you want to work and for how much. Go in and then tell them.
than, take the minimum wage offered, not as insult, but as education you actually get a liitle coin for now, instead of paying coin for it.
You will find News stations and small production companies to be quite the econimocally viable education process.

[Dewan Edwards]

Hi guys, thanks, and believe me I have no problem taking some small wage jobs. I fiqure the more experience I get the better. It was just confusing that when I mentioned a internship to some of these companies and told them were I was going they never got back with me. Not even a ” No we are taking anyone right now”.

I have decided to break out the camera and record some footage to improve my reel. I am looking at some businesses to do “interviews and history of” with.

[Grinner Hester]

I’m glad you brought that up because it’s not something we have discussd here with the current economy.
It’s always been best to specialize at a craft, rather than to be a jack of all trades… until now.
As depression sets in more as a reality to most, belts simply have to be tightened. We are all feeling this right now. Specialists are forced to evolve out of tunnel vision to save their own skins.
I, for example, always saw myself as an editor/animator. It’s not something I put on my reel or resume because I could not afford to cut my salary in half by not being a specialist.
Now, man, I am a producing, shooting, editing, animating, compositing, sound designing fool and it’s my ability to be a one man band production that will allow me to survive to the next economy mend.
…at which time I will not be able to be a specialist anymore. This is what will change in our industry. As companies seek and find more affordable turn-key solutions, they will be educated on quality.. which is often better than the 2 thousand dolalrs a finished minute old school way of thinking. You cannot explain these things to old check-writers, they have to be shown and that is what is happening with our economy now. When things start getting more fluid, they will NOT go back to their old ways of reckless spending, at least not in our category. They will have learned otherwise and will have new talent pools. If you don’t place yourself in these veritile pools right now, you will not be in this industry 2 years from now.

My ability to be a one man band production unit is now my saving-grace, not a salary cap. We all will have to utilize all of our talents to make it to the next peak of this peak and vally timeline.