>Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 00:32:48 -0400 >>> Vincet Kralyevich <[log in to unmask]> wrote Subject: interns for prod. co. nyc >>> An independent production company in NYC is looking for an intern >>> (with) clients such as the Disney Channel ..... >>On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Randy Kennedy wrote:.....maybe we can >>garner more societal and anthropological content out of it if you were to >>add the rate of pay for these interns - I'm sure we would all be interested ----------------- >(its) called learning filmmaking and putting >that experience on their resumes. >Susan Denker, Tufts Univ./Museum School Well getting a job in production is the best way by far to further that goal, and here in Toronto the rate of pay for that is $630.00/Cdn a week ($1.00 Cdn = $0.74 US, or $470.00 US/week). That is based on a 14 hour work day / five days a week, as production assistants are part of the Directors' Guild of Canada and therefore considered part of middle management. In reality the entry level is not DGC, but commercials (which can offer more per day (sometimes $150/day Cdn or 111.89 US) and non-union films (which often pay much less around $500/week or 372.95 US, for a 15 to 17 hour day with a six day week). As a level of craft commercials are generally the highest level made in the Toronto area. They often have the best and brightest and newest Canadian and American directors and DOPs and art directors along with the highest budgets (at least per second). It is through the mechanism of commercial film production that the likes of Marco Bramilla (director "Demolition Man") started, as a PA. On the other hand Stephen Surjik (director of "Waynes World II") started as a PA in the DGC art department category. It is also still possible to stay in the below the line production side and make it to director here in Toronto, which I gather is rare now (or impossible) in the DGA - (At least in the LA basin, once an Assistant Director never ever a Director - or so I have been told.) I am truly looking for comment and correction on this, and am still interested in what a intern makes in NYC, largely because the cost of living in Toronto is often one or two places behind Manhatten in a ranking of North Amercan cities, note this is not NYC in general, but Manhatten itself. You can see that given such high costs in food/shelter, more and more it is nessesary for them to go outside film production, like actors have for so long to keep in the game, given that we often work only 50% of the year. In the last several years the DGC increased the cost of entering the guild, and we have found more PAs staying on the commercial side, or I think getting burnt out in non-union production. This begs the question of what sort of person actually makes it through this entry level - in the early stages I found and still find I am rewarded for one of my most self-loathed traits: being able to stay awake and appearing fuctional for 20, and once 30 hours at a time. One other trait that gets rewarded more now is having parents who let you live at home > or for that matter pay your rent. The ones I see keeping at it over the years seem more and more to have a very tough clear-headedness and a sharper savy on set-politics, but I don't know if this what we want or need, there seemed to be a broader range of skills that made it through just years ago. So is it only the tough, wealthy and sleep disordered kids that will make it through the culling here and else where - or the ones who bypass this process altogether? ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]