- Job Requirements: Must be local to location (or willing to work as a local).
‘Skilled Production Assistant’
JOB DESCRIPTION
We seek an integral member of the team! We are a small and ambitiously creative boutique production company in the San Francisco bay area. Our work is 70% brand marketing ads, 30% documentary and people select us because we combine cinematic imagery with authenticity and spontaneity. Our regular shoots currently work with just two team members handling all of the technical work spanning sound, lighting and camera. It’s going to work much better with a third ‘skilled production assistant’. We don’t want to keep relying on hiring in different freelance PAs for every shoot because we want to build a really tight creative and technical relationship on set where everybody understands the gear, and all their roles, intimately.
Specifics: Part-time (project based initially, working up to more guaranteed hours)
Pay rate: $300/day
So, who exactly are we looking for?
Requirements:
A demonstrable willingness to take responsibility for field audio. Sufficient working knowledge of field audio to understand how to prep a space for good sound, how to pick the right mic, how to place a lav mic to avoid scratching, how to run a mixer and when the quality of on location audio is good enough to capture for sound design elements. On very field sound-heavy projects, we do hire a freelance specialist but on regular shoots we find it unnecessary because it can easily be handled by somebody also handling other things.
A demonstrable willingness to play a key role in lighting setups. Sufficient working knowledge of lighting to understand how to pick the right temp balances for our looks, the right diffusion levels, when and how to bounce, when and how to add negative fill, when and how to rig in-frame lights and at times express jerry-rig engineering skills that blow us all away.
A willingness to load and unload.
A willingness to jump in on multi-hand gimbal moves.
A strong desire to work in a team environment where we train on new techniques together, work off our collective balance of skills and give our projects all the great benefits of working together like clockwork.
A strong desire to be involved in the making of creative, authentic short form branding content as well as documentaries at the highest level of production quality. This is not suitable for somebody who wants to be making narrative movies with very large crew sizes.
Owner of a vehicle
Living in the bay area at least within 1 hr of Oakland (without traffic!). We prefer somebody who has lived in the area for a while because local knowledge can be so helpful.
A life situation that puts a 3-year commitment to our team very likely.
Because this is part-time, this person would need an additional income stream that is flexible enough to allow availability at relatively short notice, and sometimes on weekends (though we do our best to lock shoot dates at least 10 days ahead).
Additional Helpful Assets:
One pathway to ultimately make this a more involved position with more hours and a greater contribution, is for this person to also play a line producer role during pre-production. This role requires a top notch communication skills, organizational and office skills, as well as a willingness to dig in and get to know all aspects of how to run a small production company if you don’t know already.
We are well aware that we’re asking for a lot! But for the right person, we believe this position will also give a lot.