Where should I intern at?

[Bob Zelin]

Boy, is this a popular thread !

This is my stupid advice. I learned nothing in college. I learned that cutting classes, and going to real jobs, or internships, is where I learned everything, and why people eventually hired me. I learned that my fear of not knowing how to do something, gave me the incentive to study harder, to make sure that I knew a product, so I would not get fired.

Most people that are AVID editor learned it by sitting there with the equipment, and suffered, and made mistake after mistake, and eventually learned how to use the AVID. Most AVID editors never took a FCP class – they sat there, and suffered, and learned FCP, cursing and screaming every step of the way. You learn AVID, FCP, Photoshop, etc. because you have to eat, you have to make your car payments, you want to go on a date and pay for dinner, so you STUDY AND LEARN.

You will find that 50% of the employers are not looking for qualified people – they are looking for CHEAP LABOR. And if you can apply to a place, and get thru to the boss, and show him that you can do the job (graphics, editing, etc.) – even if you are TERRIBLE compared to his experienced editors, he will give you the opportunity to work, because you are CHEAP, and there are countless employers out there that have only one goal – to get rid of their expensive experienced employees, and hire some “cheap labor kid” – just like you – because somehow, someway, you can get thru the job, and he can make more money. I held the “chief engineer” title at 2 companies in NY in my early 20’s, with almost NO KNOWLEGE of what I was doing – but I was cheap.

You will also find, that if you get into a production company, and just STAY THERE for 2-3 years, you will get every opportunity that you want (this does not apply to major TV stations, where people stay for 20 years, but to smaller companies). I saw secretaries in big ad agencies in NY who 5 years later were full producers for major commercials, and they never even went to college. They stuck around, they learned, they were ambitious, and they were given opportunities.

You have local TV stations in your community – get them to hire you. Be aggressive, say you will do anything. I bet there are 3-5 TV stations in your area that are less than 1 hour away from your house. Apply to all of them, find out who the head of graphics is, who the head editor is (call and find out, then call back and ask for that person). Ask for an internship with HIM (not from the Human Resources department). Be aggressive.

You make your own luck. This is how I got my first job in the TV business in NY. In 1978 I went up to EUE Screen Gems (later to become Editel NY), and asked to see Jack Shultis, who was the studio manager (I got his name from the NY Film Directory). I had no appointment, and my puny resume. I told the secretary that I was here to see Jack Shultis. She got Jack Shultis on the phone, and he asked what the hell I wanted. “I am looking for a job in the engineering department”. Mr. Shultis could not be bothered seeing me, or seeing my resume, and wanting to just end the conversation with the secretary, and get rid of me, he told the secretary to call the chief engineer (I forgot his name). The secretary called him, and said “Jack Shultis said you should see this guy” – and he thought that I was a recommendation from Jack Shultis, and hired me on the spot, for more money than I was even asking for. I knew NOTHING, and there were a lot of old timers there that got a kick out of “teaching the young kid”. This was the first time I had ever seen color bars, or a BNC connector. Like I said, you make your own luck.

Bob Zelin

[John Cummings]

Amen, Bob.

I opted out of a formal eduction and elected to throw myself into the deep end of the business without any training at all…just intense desire.

Those early years were the most rewarding and fun…living by my wits and powered by junk food. Taking the crappy jobs and slowly making my mark on the industry.

Over the years, I’ve lost count of how many college graduates I had to teach how to edit, direct, produce and write. Many of those students came out of good schools like Columbia, Northwestern and Missouri.

Twenty five years later, I’m still in the trenches, enjoying my craft, and making a good living running my own business.

Many of the “idiots” I trained are now high level managers, correspondents and producers on national TV. I keep in touch with some of them, and some of them are in a position to throw work my way and often do.

So, what’s my point? There are many paths to a sucessful career in a creative industry. It’s not like we’re making bombs or anything

[Mike Cohen]

In my experience, i did 4 internships. Unsure of what part of the industry i wanted to work in, I did the following. however, doing this many internships was uncommon, but it did get me out of 4 classes!

1. WCVB – Channel 5 Boston. Midday news intern.
2. WFSB – Channel 3 Hartford – assignment desk intern.
3. COX Cable Advertising
4. Visual Concepts Media – high-end corporate media
5. Travelers Television – insurance company studio (not technically an internship)
6. TV Studio administrative assistant, teaching assistant, “the guy with the magnetic key card to the equipment locker” – this was a paid on-campus job.

So some people believe a college experience opens doors which may not be otherwise open to you. Plenty of people are self-taught, or have migrated to their current production jobs from other careers in media, journalism or zookeeping for example.

You can read in more detail about my internships here:
https://blogs.creativecow.net/node/221

Mike

[Nick Griffin]

Hey guys, Shhhhhhhh! That kind of path to success is supposed to be a SECRET. Don’t tell the newbie that, no matter WHAT you study, everything you really learn comes from on-the-job training. What fun is it if he knows it now instead of finding out much later, the way we had to.

But seriously, I think it’s a mistake for someone fresh out of high school to think that because others skipped or skipped out on the college experience that doing the same will work for them. Hell, I took a theater major but spent 90 percent of my time and 99% of my energy in the radio station, recording studio and coffee house stage. But just being in college proved productive because it’s where I met many of the people with whom I later connected professionally.

Stay in school, Ty! Just learn as much as you can from as many places as you can.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m a big fan of a Liberal Arts education, where you learn HOW to learn, while you learn what you learn. It makes you adaptable when one specialty gets overrun or dries up, and lets you grow into new areas of specialty as they emerge.

Not that people can’t be successful going thru a tech school, however I would say the biggest successes that come out of tech schools also filled in the gaps in their own knowledge and experience with non-stop active self-exploration outside of the narrow tech curriculum. They were not content to stop at the place in the book where their teachers stopped.

You say to me: “But as an editor, I really don’t see what studying (xyz course) has to do with me making a living. It’s nice, but it’s fluff, a luxury. Gimme business courses.”
Nothing wrong with taking business courses, I recommend them if you ever want to work for yourself.

I’ve worked with people who learned just the bare, narrow, technical minimums of their immediate time period, and I was constantly having to clean up their work behind them when they misspelled chyrons because they were unfamiliar with terms, or made other glaring errors due to a lack of general knowledge. And as time went on, their tech skills struggled to keep up because while they had learned what button to push in what sequence to get a certain result, they understood little of what was BEHIND those buttons and wires, HOW and WHY they did what they did. And when the buttons changed, or new buttons came in, or a new result from the old buttons was desired, somene else had to re-train them in how to deal with this.

In the editing suite, when writing and directing, I have drawn on multiple disciplines like art history, sociology, politics, physics, music, literature, English composition, and more. If you look at it the right way, EVERYTHING feeds into making you a complete human being, and it is the variety of those skills and the mix of ways you apply them to the work, that make you a more effective video producer.

Not that I’m an expert in everything, but it certainly is helpful to be able to describe what you want musically as something like Aaron Copeland, if you need woodwinds or brass, That you want a 6/8 or a driving 4/4, or to explain to the client that you are using the rule of thirds or the golden proportion in this composition, or that the composition of a particular shot is deliberately evocative of so-and-so-‘s painting, or that for the lighting of a shot you want the wrap-around feeling of a Vermeer, or why this color is a bad choice because it’s not across from a complement on the color wheel and moreover, in the culture of the client paying for this work, that color has a bad subtext to it… Or why a dissolve is used one way and not another, based on the history of film.

It’s hard to manipulate or convey structures and concepts if you can’t communicate them. A Liberal Arts background is a fine base to work from in getting this “life vocabulary”. It is not the only path, certainly there are other ways as valid, for some people. But I like this method for being so open-ended. Formally or informally, never stop learning, for the day you stop is the day you start to die.

[Tyler Groom]

I will definitely continue my education there is no doubt about that, the problem that I am experiencing is that they dont offer any motion graphics classes or anything similar at my community college. I have a great job and I don’t want to leave, but I do want to further myself.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[quicksilver8907] “I will definitely continue my education there is no doubt about that, the problem that I am experiencing is that they dont offer any motion graphics classes or anything similar at my community college.”

Creative COW is an international prestigious non-accredited institution whose curriculum is in use today by teams in film, broadcast and many other fields. We see some shows where the team/user didn’t even bother to change the presets in the project files and just used them, as-is. They got a flunking grade esthetically but got extra bonus points in the business round for being resourceful under dire time constraints.

Best of all, you can sign up for classes just by showing up. :o)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Tyler Groom]

I am somewhat confused, is there actually a real-life class or are you talking about the online creative cow community?? Thanks

[Ron Lindeboom]

I am talking about the community, the tutorials, the podcasts, the magazine, et al.

Best,

Ron Lindeboom

[Tyler Groom]

Do you think I could become a professional by just using this site to learn, I want a truly honest answer please
Thanks