The Day After
“So, I have a bunch of business cards. Now what?” -Fictional Reader I Just Made Up The TAPAlooza{{1}} Festival went swimmingly. The place was packed when I arrived, and there were still a few small groups of people when I left a couple hours later. A good time was had by all, and many business […]
Change of Venue
I am just overwhelmed by the response to my networking event. I genuinely wasn’t sure if anyone would want to show up, but over a hundred people have RSVPed on Facebook. Turns out, this is too many customers for the Federal.{{1}} So, I had to move the location down the road to Maeve’s Residuals: 11042 […]
First Contact
Cara writes in: What are your thoughts on business cards, especially for a young person just starting out and looking to make contacts? I am planning on coming to your meet-up next Sunday. Are business cards appropriate there? What about just in general? Is having (and giving out) business cards standard, or will it make me […]
Reviving Old Contacts
R.O. writes in: Love your blog! Please keep posting 🙂 I have a question that I haven’t seen being addressed. Since my situation is a bit specific, I wanted to go ahead and throw it out there. I got a film degree and “worked” (a.k.a did a bunch of stuff for no pay) for 3 […]
So You Have an Idea…
Joe writes in: I’m just a 32 year old boy. And like every 32 year old boy, I have an idea for a TV series. I don’t have any connections, but I do have a show bible and pilot script. Is there any way a regular old boy without any connections can get anyone to […]
The N-Word
Maybe it goes without saying, but considering that one of the PAs on my show said it to me last week, I’m going to go ahead and say it explicitly. It is never, ever, EVER okay to say the N-word at work. Never ever. I’m talking, of course, about “networking.” (This goes hand in hand […]
A New Way to Network
Walking around the lot today, I ran into a UPM I worked for last year. During that show, she had recommended I read a book that was very important to her life. (She also claimed it was the second most read book in the world, but that isn’t actually true.) Anyway, I had read the […]
Connecting
Mr. Hart replied to a post from earlier in the week: Ok so lets say you have a well written screenplay or you are in the process of writing one, how does one go about selling it? For example, I am a PA on a television series and what if I wanted to write a […]
Comic-con: Not for Comics Alone
It’s Christmas in July in San Diego. That’s because one of the biggest pop culture celebrations in the country is going on: the San Diego Comic Con, nerd heaven, and the film industry’s bucktoothed mistress. The Con began as a regular comic book convention, but since the industry discovered it was one of the best […]
The Remember Letter
The film industry is notorious for its transience. Finding steady work is like finding the fountain of youth: chasing a mirage. Back in the golden days of Hollywood, crew were devoted to a studio. They signed a contract to just work on Warner pictures or MGM pictures and films were cranked out assembly-line-like as they […]
Patience
Conventional wisdom that tells us a guy should wait three days before calling a girl when she gives you her number. “That’s great dating advice, Anonymous,” you say, “but what does that have to do with being a production assistant?” I’m glad you asked. I was at a networking event last night. Just drinks at a […]
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 […]