>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?
 
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