Where are the Roger Corman of our generation

[rgesualdo]

what is your opinion on apprenticeship, passing the knowledge of your craft to future generation? Is something that has been lost and that in my opinion it is so helpful to aspiring filmmakers.

almost every american director from the Independent Movement in the 60's and 70's went through Roger Corman school (to give it name) he helped launch the career of so many great directors.

 

[Agenda Productions]

Passing knowledge from one to another is one of the most important parts of learning.
Can you elaborate more on your statement?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've been getting requests lately from young people who want to work as an intern on a movie shoot -- the problem I've discovered is that a production won't allow people to work who aren't covered for liability / injury, plus they can't have unpaid labor on the set, so if the intern is not a paid employee of the shoot, then they have to be covered as a student working under a school's internship program.

So I've had one intern so far work for me because they were a student at the time and the internship was for school credit... but otherwise I've had to turn people away because they were no longer in a program that would cover their liability.

Now there may be other organizations that have internship / mentorship programs, like AMPAS or ATAS or the unions, or Film Independent (formally IFP-West), so you may want to contact them.

Obviously I spend a lot of time online giving out advice too, not just here, to pass along my experience and knowledge.

 

[Agenda Productions]

What exactly did the intern do? Were they an attachment to the camera department?

I ask because there have been times where guys came on set as a 'camera attachments' and ended up being a truck loader and/or running the video split. These are both good jobs in terms of learning how the set works, peoples roles ect but people are so caught up on getting an attachment or internship i think the way to go is to contact a focus puller and come on as a low paid employee running the split or call up a gaffer and say you will work for base rate as a fourth running cables ect.

What job did you have an intern on? Your obviously extremely busy on a feature did he/she get in your way?

Thanks, James

ps- Thanks for the insight from cine.com today with a Moonlight- The only moonlight i have created and stuck with has been half correction with 1/4 + Green or WFG but looking to go for the type of look from the still you posted.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I had an intern working on "Akeelah and the Bee" -- he mainly assisted the camera crew, as you said, running cables, carrying mag cases, etc. My only regret was that they kept him so busy that I didn't have a lot of opportunities to speak to him. But the truth is that I'm so busy on a film set that I don't have time to speak anyway...

Trouble with trying to just get hired as a camera loader on a film shoot, or an electrician, grip, cable person, etc. is that it would have to be on lower-budgeted non-union jobs if you weren't in the appropriate union.

 

[element80]

Aside from the cost, are there any disadvantages to joining a union? Does that mean you can't do non-union work? Also, would joining a union actually increase your chances at getting on higher-budget productions?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

IATSE members can work on non-union shoots.

Any larger-budget project will probably be an IATSE shoot, but being a member of IATSE doesn't automatically mean that you will be offered bigger projects, it just makes you able to take them when you get a chance to be hired.

It sort of goes together -- you join at the time in your career when you'd probably get more union work, so your rates go up, the budgets are higher, etc.

Other advantages are a health and pension plan.

Can't think of any real disadvantage other than the high cost of joining, unless you consider it to be a problem that you may be asked to walk off of a non-union shoot as a group until the producers sign the IA contract. By being a member, you are obligated to support the union's job actions.