Being freelance forces me to constantly look for networking opportunities or smaller jobs that may lead to bigger jobs. Last summer I got a call from a friend of mine who works at Rule Broadcast (now Rule/Boston Camera), a fabulously staffed and equipped company where I have bought and rented a lot of gear. He said he had recommended me to a production manager who was looking for someone with expertise on the Sony XDCAM EX-1, a camera I had bought from Rule earlier that year. Shortly after we talked I got a call from the production manager who said they were doing a three-day shoot near Cape Cod of some historical re-enactment scenes for a documentary. They had a DP from Los Angeles, but he had little or no experience with the EX-1 and wanted a camera assistant for their shoot. The pay was small, but the shoot sounded interesting and I enjoy working on different kinds of shoots, especially with more experienced people who I can learn from.
The shoot was a great experience. We filmed beach scenes for a documentary about a famous pirate shipwreck off of Cape Cod. I helped set up their camera (which was owned by the director, Charlie Burnham, although he had little hands-on experience with it) with the appropriate settings that would work for the look of their film, and assisted the DP with some of the features of the camera. I brought my own EX-1 along (just in case) and they ended up having me shoot second camera on a few scenes. It was a good day of shooting and I had fun (although it was miserably cold and windy on the beach… but at least I wasn’t one of the actors who spent the better part of the day playing “dead”, lying on the wet beach). At the end of the day I helped Charlie offload the footage and we started chatting. He was interested in the work that I do, and really appreciated my technical knowledge of the camera and workflow. I gave him my card before I left and told him we’d keep in touch.
A month or so later I got a call from Charlie; he was planning some more scenes for his film to be shot in Provincetown and asked if I could be the second unit DP and do some interviews and other filming for the non-reenactment part of the doc. Immediately it was clear that taking that one-day shoot for a smaller paycheck the month before was going to pay off. I ended up filming with him in Provincetown for three days (and did my first underwater shooting while doing my first open water scuba dive) and had a blast.
Since then I have done a number of other projects with Charlie. He has a successful business doing corporate videos, mostly for pharmaceutical companies. I have worked with him on many different projects, and he has hired me to edit and oversee all of the post-production on his documentary (which is turning into a pretty big job). So, the moral of the story is that it clearly pays to be open to the smaller jobs, especially if there is an opportunity to learn something new or meet some new people who may be able to hire you in the future.
I just did an interesting job with Charlie this past week, which I was going to write about here, but I have already gotten a little long-winded so I will save it for my next post that I’ll write over the weekend.
Tags: EX-1, freelance, networking