All posts by r_mahaffie

It’s All About Who You Know

Though we’ve heard it time and time again, this Hollywood “motto” still seems to ring true. Networking is the buzz word when anyone we’ve met with is asked the question, “How do you get into this business?” As a student who hopes to be successful in the entertainment industry one day, this “networking” thing can be daunting. Paul Mazursky, with whom we met today found his start as an actor in Stanley Kubrick’s first film. From there it was mostly uphill for Mazursky as he found roles acting, and then writing television, until eventually he ended up writing on a feature. This kind of start has been the norm for most of the great people we’ve met since we began our trip. They all seemed to stumble into their current job through connections, working hard, or dumb luck.

 As we enter the third week of class many of us are struggling to find interviews with people in our area of interest. Most talent agents I’ve called looking have dismissed me to email and then I’ve been ignored. The only way I found my interview was in fact through extensive networking; my mother’s partner’s mother’s co-worker set me up with an interview with a production designer. How does anyone ever meet with anyone else in this town much less get a job?

 I was speaking with a CC grad who came to the recent grad night we held, and he told me his struggles when trying to “break in” to the industry. As if Hollywood is a giant castle on a hill, and the only way in is to know the king, or to break into the dungeons and work your way up. After a couple weeks of no calls, no emails, no nothing, he was pretty ready to throw in the towel on Hollywood. But one day he got a callback for a PA position and he’s had nearly non-stop work since. Once he had “broken in” the rest was taken care of. The networking came naturally as he was pulled from one job to the next by people he had met along the way.

Not everyone can go from building a door to flying the Millennium Falcon, like Harrison Ford. But it seems through a little luck and a good attitude, networking can get anyone into the business. And once you know someone who has made it, they’ll throw the rope out so you can be pulled in next.  

A Thank to the Thankless

Over the course of our first week in Hollywood we’ve met with quite a few important people in the entertainment industry, yet no one outside of Hollywood knows their name. Their work is necessary to the success of film and television but few take the time to even notice, much less thank them. I would like to take the time to thank these unseen men and women.

Much of the work these people do goes completely unnoticed. For example, when meeting with the sound mixer at NBC Universal we learned about the work he does on comedies like “The Office,” “Scrubs,” and “Brooklyn 99.” He isolated various mixes within the sound, showing us the underlying layers of sound and the e.q. mixing he used to create them. Sound effects that go completely unnoticed by the majority of viewers are actually integral to maintaining the realism of TV and film. We saw another example of unnoticed work when we went behind the scenes on the soundstage for a dramatic hour-long show. Approaching the soundstage from the outside, we saw the raw wood on the back of flats, but the moment we stepped inside the house, we were transported into a period home in another state.  The set decorator we met discussed the detail that the production designer inserted into each room, detail that is unseen by viewers as it is often in the background and out of focus. This detail is incredibly important, however, because without it, a set would appear flat and empty and thus not realistic as someone’s home. We also met with archivists in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archive. The archivists here save copies of films and documentaries including all their dailies and other unused footage, and store them in an archive. This preservation work is incredibly important to the entertainment industry, yet an average person doesn’t even know this work is happening.

The statistics say 2% of people living in Los Angeles work in the entertainment industry, but of those 2%, only a few are ever recognized by the general public. These un-thanked people work hard, and though their work is incredibly important, when it’s done well, very few people ever notice it. This is the life of any technical film staff other than, perhaps, the cinematographer, whose work only in recent years has begun being noticed and rewarded. So Thank You, to all those whose work in the entertainment industry goes completely unnoticed. Thank You, for working hard to create something that no one will ever thank you for.