Q: Hi, David. I’m about to graduate in a month and currently looking for a job. Given circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, what is the best practice for me to do during this time to finally get a job after the situation mitigates?
A: It’s a great question, Tham, and an important question and I’ll answer with a question: is moving back in with your parents an option?! If so, do that immediately. Also, if you can get run over by an oil sheik in a Lamborghini, that pays pretty handsomely.
If not, then brace yourself, young padawan. I believe it will absolutely be tough for the Class of 2020 to break into Hollywood. How tough? Well, let’s just say tougher than sitting through “The Irishman” — or a whole season of DEVS!
To recap, thanks to this bat-pandemic, most new jobs and all of the internships are frozen (Disney pun intended). Every year at The Walt Disney Company we have between 300 to 400 paid internships. They’ve all disintegrated in a single Thanos snap. Studios, sitting idle, are bleeding money and once the USA opens back up for business (July? October? January?) there will be a lot of downsizing as they try to absorb losses. But once we get through that corrective phase, then there will be a resurgence, lots of growth, new direction and new opportunities into 2021.
Like that great, Gungan philosopher once promised, “Thissa be messy!”
Usually, in a normal job market, skilled regulars are employed and as they move up the ladder, it creates entry level jobs where we try to squeeze in the new kids: interns, production assistants, writer’s assistants, car washers, etc. But currently, thousands of skilled regulars are out of work so when the industry does slowly re-emerge, the emphasis will be getting them back to work first before adding in the new kids to the mix. Savvy?
If ramping the skilled regulars back to work is gonna take 4 to 8 months, then I wouldn’t even arrive in Tinseltown as a newbie until Summer 2021 at the earliest! Because right now even the survival jobs are scarce. Uber driving, waiting tables, coffee baristas, all the jobs we do while we’re waiting for the big one to land are like two-headed unicorns or well-adjusted Kardashians. They’re almost impossible to find.
So what can you do, meanwhile, to make yourself more marketable?
Plenty!
1. BACK TO SCHOOL: No, wait hear me out! When I graduated from NC State (go Wolfpack!) I freelanced in video production for about 5 years but then a recession hit (d’oh!) in 1998-99 and all the work started drying up so I decided that was the perfect time to go back to grad school for my MA in Communication. Specifically, Directing and Editing.
I know, I know, I know you’re finishing school so the thought of more school might give you the heebie-jeebies but an MFA or MBA might also be the perfect 2- to 3-year commitment that gets you down the road past all of this industry carnage and fallout. And if it’s a school like a USC or UCLA or Chapman or Biola that’s in SoCal and also has Hollywood ties through professors and curriculum programs, then it’s a double-whammy kablammy! Translation: Grad school puts you in the area, getting super-trained and specialized just waiting for the right jobs to open up. Booyah!
Remember one of my big sayings about Hollywood? Here it is again:
2. YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN: When the job market does open back up, they have thousands of local filmmakers to place into open positions. They don’t need to even look at a resumé from Paducah, Kentucky or Lizard Lick, North Carolina. Why would they? They have 10,000 applicants from Burbank that are here and skilled and ready to start tomorrow! So having a reason, like school, to be in the area when things open up is a huge advantage. In fact, write this down: always have a local LA address on your application!
3. DO NOT PANIC: Understand that you don’t have to focus on the glut of bad news circulating. There will be newspapers and so-called experts all quoting miserably outrageous outlooks for the Class of 2020. But, choose to be the exception, not the rule. When I was graduating there was a ton of smack talk about the slack GenX group I was counted in. And to be fair there were a lot of duds! Latchkey kids on the rise, more drug use than ever before, more likely to hack N.O.R.A.D. and start thermonuclear war games, more likely to feed creatures after midnight, more likely to die from a Russian invasion that forced you to form a beleaguered rag-tag team called the “Wolverines” to fight back against their commie overlords. But look at me now!! I’m at the bottom of the top Studio in the world! High five!
So, in other words, forget the odds! Damn the statistics!
4. TRACK NEW TRENDS: There are always unique opportunities if you keep your eyes open for them. Like, five years ago becoming an Uber or Lyft driver was a tremendous opportunity in LA that never existed before. People set their own hours, made their own pay, were able to take time off when they needed to go to auditions or work on films. It was brilliant. And now that opportunity is drying up partly because the bat-flu is keeping everyone in, but mostly because of gig legislation handicapping our freelancers. Boo, California! Boo!
But I promise you there will be new opportunities that open up. In the last five to eight years the big talent agencies began contracting with social media influencers. (This week, even AI influencers!) CAA can have Brad Pitt and GloZell! Megan Fox and Rhett & Link. David Acuff and Scruffy (if you know, you know!) But the more cycles around the sun you make, the more you realize there are always old ways dying and new ways cropping up. Seriously, when’s the last time you received a telegram? Exactly.
Keep an eye out for that new thing. Look for trends and places to specialize. When the Steadi-Cam came out there was a huge need for buff, fit operators to learn them. Same with the latest drone craze. They needed skilled and licensed operators to buzz the sky. What’s a new tech trend on the horizon? I’ll give you a hint: Virtual Reality.
5. KEEP GETTING BETTER: Keep honing your craft in the meanwhile. Keep getting better than all your peers at understanding what makes a good script great; at shooting compelling short films; at editing great content. Now’s the time to go through all those awesome Video CoPilot tutorials and up your VFX game! Now’s the time to take that TV Pilot or Movie Outlining class online from Tom Benedek or Scott Myers.
And along these lines expand your feedback loop! We know your mom thinks you’re the greatest writer or photographer or web developer on the entire planet. Don’t trust her! Enter writing contests and solicit professional feedback (even paid for starters!) to get a fair and balanced assessment.
Spoiler alert: you’re a work in progress like the rest of us!
6. WORK THE NETWORK: Use every connection you have and every connection your connections have to make connections!! Get on LinkedIN and just start friending people who are doing what you want to do. Be polite and ask thoughtful questions. Everyone loves to talk about how they got their start or what they’re working on or lessons they learned. They most likely will not give you a job, but their advice can help guide you through the daunting process.
One of the pieces of advice I learned through my Intro to Hollywood phase was that there’s a ton of Temp Agencies in LA and Burbank who have existing contracts with all the big studios. So I picked one that specifically serviced Dreamworks, Warner Brothers and Disney. Temp agencies are a huge top-secret shortcut into the Studio industry that no one talks about! And get this, some of them like AppleOne are national companies. That means you can get on board in your own city and start working with them and then transfer! Same with Disney jobs. Disney owns ABC. A lot of snobby filmmakers (like me!) don’t want news jobs (Ew!) but guess what? If you get a job with your local ABC affiliate, then you’re in the family! You’re a Cast Member! You then have access to apply for other jobs in the Disney eco-system. See? You gotta play the long game.
7. PIVOT TO SOLITARY SKILLS: Okay so you can’t direct your four-part World War 2 Alien Romance biopic with a thousand of your closest friends because of social distancing! You can turn your WW2 screenplay into a novelization and publish on Amazon and KDP. I test drove the process last year and turned a short story of mine into my first book, Historians Proper, with more on the way. Writing and publishing is totally do-able from your own bedroom-office! Become the master of getting your own IP (intellectual property) to market!! And understand that story and IP are the life-blood of Hollywood!
8. GO PLAY ARMY: It’s an out-there-idea but I’ve got friends currently who are joining the Army or the Reserves to augment their finances and to pay for their college. The military complex is very relatable to the Studio complex in that they’re highly authority driven (instead of Generals we have Executive Producers, PAs instead of Privates, Starbucks instead of MREs, etc) and mobilizing campaigns and productions both require huge administration and coordination efforts. So many transferable skills!
Plus, let’s face it, after a drill sergeant has yelled at you and kicked your butt in the mud, then there’s no mealy-mouthed Producer on the planet that will be able to get under your skin! So, you could go hang out in Army for three to six years, gain some extra skills, see the world, pay for school, learn to be John Wick, jr. and then come back and go all Chili Palmer on the production world. We’ll still be here! I promise.
Lastly, but most importantly….
NEVER RULE OUT ZOMBIES: I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but always keep a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire in your car trunk or purse because if this pandemic goes sideways and the zombies break out, the important thing is that Lucilles don’t need reloading.
Just a thought.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: S. David Acuff lives in North Hollywood, CA and edits full-time for Walt Disney Television. He enjoys doing voice work for Audible projects (The Barnburner, The WOW Factor Workplace, Where An Angel’s On a Rope) as well as animated characters (Angel Wars, Herman Goes to School). He authored the epic Sci Fi story Historians Proper available on Amazon as well as wrote/edited the feature film, Restoration, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
His life-motto is very simply, “What doesn’t kill you makes you funnier!”
Follow him on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest: @davidacuff