The Anonymous Production Assistant

Keep Your Eye on Your Long Term Goal

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

Marty Lang contacted me on Twitter, presumably in refernce to the joblist, or my own jobs page: @TheAnonymousPA there really is no way to get an inside track on a writer’s assistant position, is there? I scour sites all over the place, and the closest I ever came to finding one was the showrunners assistant […]

When to Lie in an Interview

I interviewed recently to be the assistant to an EP on a network TV show. My interview philosophy has changed over the last few years. When I first started out, I lied my way through nearly every question in an interview. When they’d ask what I wanted to do in Hollywood for the rest of […]

Foreign Experience

Max writes: I work as an office PA in Malta, which has a small but steadily growing film industry largely based on foreign films shooting here rather than our own local production. We have all manner of shoots here from music videos and small commercials to high-budget, high-profile American films and TV, and everyone pretty […]

Who You Gonna Call?

Scott writes: I really enjoy your blog, it’s entertaining and informative. I do have one question to which I could not find the answer after going through your past blogs. I’m pretty new to all this so; when cold calling from Production Notices, like this one: “THE CAPE” Pilot / NBC 02-11-10 BERMANBRAUN STATUS – […]

Unemployment

David wrote in about a subject everyone in the industry can relate to.  He was making small talk with a clerk at an oil change place, and mentioned that he was out of a job, momentarily– it’s no biggie since the production season is winding down anyway and that I should be able to pick […]

Postings for Writers’ Assistants

Kathleen writes: I am about to graduate in this lovely economic recession with hopes of landing a job in an already competitive industry. I have literally done everything. I even tried finding old UTA joblists and emailing actually people on it trying to sell myself. The one type of job that is virtually impossible to […]

Who Hires Someone With No Experience?

Megan, who wrote in last week, has an interesting follow-up: You were right, I don’t have much experience. So far just one 3-day shoot for a low budget independent film and a few other things I did on my own while in school. Are there specific types of projects that are more likely to hire […]

Replaceable

I heard the following story second hand, but I believe it, because the director in question is a real bitch. (For my feminist readers, please don’t interpret my use of the word “bitch” as “I can’t handle working for a woman because I’m part of the repressed, straight white male hegemony.”  I’ve worked for plenty […]

Networking

After working in low budget film for a number of years, I started running into people I’d worked with before. At a certain point, I realized this was a bad sign. As they say, you’re the average of the five people closest to you. Professionally, the five people closest to me were all working on […]

The Case of the Missing Post

Sorry I didn’t post anything yesterday.  I was working on set. I was at the stage for sixteen hours, but when I got home, I couldn’t sleep. “Exhausting but fun,” indeed.  It was all rain and green screen and waiting for the camera guys to get their heads out of their asses, but I was […]

What’s in a Name?

For tax reasons that I don’t really understand, studios generally create limited liability corporations for each individual film and TV show they make. Often, these LLCs are just “Stupid Michael Bay Movie, Inc.” or “Yet Another CBS Procedural, LLC.”  Sometimes they’re jokey; I believe Starship Troopers was “Big Bug Productions.” Sometimes, if it’s a really […]

How to Impress

A friend of mine discovered I write this blog, and is now playing a rousing game of “Guess the Roman à Clef.” She hasn’t gotten them all right, so I’m glad my attempts at obscuring my identity have had some effect. Anyway, she had a tip for getting on the director’s (or anyone else’s) good […]