The Anonymous Production Assistant

What Is a Hollywood Assistant?

Dwight Assistant Regional Manager

I frequently get emails from new readers who are confused about what an assistant in Hollywood actually is.There are a lot of jobs in Hollywood with the word “assistant” in the title, which can be very misleading to someone new to the Industry. These seem like entry-level positions, but many of them are not; in […]

Contacts & Lists

Photo by Wesley Hilario on Unsplash

There’s around 150 to 200 people on any given film or television production. It’s a safe bet they’re not all Facebook friends. So, it’s up to the production office to create various lists with names and contact info. This begins, as with most things, with the [glossary]start work[/glossary] packet. Along with the I9’s and payroll […]

The Match Game

This is another one of those things I keep seeing when I help people with their resume and cover letter: the name on your resume needs to match the name on your email address. This is especially true of Gmail accounts, since it’s probably the most common email out there, both for individuals and for […]

Assistant Production Coordinator Jasmine Barceló

Today’s guest is someone most of my readers would like to meet– an assistant production coordinator. Jasmine Barceló started out as a PA on Dexter, just like you or me, and has worked her way up to a position of authority. (At least, as far as PAs are concerned.) If you’re the kind of person […]

Sympathy for the Departments

Every morning, the office receives a [glossary]production report[/glossary] in [glossary]the football[/glossary]. And every morning, the production report is wrong. A PR, for those who don’t know, is a bizarro call sheet. Instead of telling you what you’re going to do tomorrow, it tells you what you actually did yesterday. It lists the scenes that were shot, in […]

Reader Advice

Some of my oldish posts have been getting comments, recently. Not really sure why this is happening now, but they do bring up interesting points. Sarah replied to my post “No, You Don’t Need to Go to Film School”: You don’t need to go to any school, but film school is one of the few […]

What’s in a Title?

Lyric writes: I am a new PA with big goals and I was called by a production company to be an Assistant Coordinator for a video game commercial. I am not too sure what the job entails but they know and I know that I can handle the workload. I wanted to know if you […]

Life Cycle of a Show (Act I)

Step One: Hear About the Show When you’re looking for a job, anything sounds good. “They’re strippers who are also spies? That’s totally plausible, and I wouldn’t be at all ashamed to tell my mom I worked on that movie.” Step Two: Research Once I decide to apply, I immediately IMDb everyone involved in the […]