Crowded Field Requires Humility, Confidence, and Sucking (It) Up

Have No Shame

It’s hard to believe that anyone would turn down free labor, but finding an internship in the film industry seems cutthroat even to those of us who have made it through the Columbia housing lottery.

Some companies recruit interns directly through the Columbia film department. According to Professor Annette Insdorf, director of Undergraduate Film Studies, a dozen internship offers come in each week and are forwarded to film students via e-mail. If you’re not on the mailing list, you can still peruse the book of internship opportunities in the film division office on the fifth floor of Dodge Hall. However, many will still find that using resources outside of Columbia to bag that internship is essential.

Though it’s easier to search for internships in the comforting glow of your laptop, a more effective approach is to get off your ass and network. If you ask anyone in the industry, they’ll tell you that the best way to get your foot in the door is by opening your mouth. According to Mitchell Gutman, a film student in the School of the Arts, “The thing that will help you get a job in the industry more than anything else is shamelessness.”

Film major Jen Handorf, CC ’05, followed this advice while hostessing at the Cannes Film Festival. She approached an older man in a paisley suit at a party, offered him a cigar, and began a conversation only to discover he was Lloyd Kaufman, head of Troma Entertainment, the oldest independent film company in America. Her gutsy move led Kaufman to introduce her to his associates, and she returned to Cannes the following year as director of communications for one of their small production companies. Gutman insists, “You have to be willing to go up to somebody and say, ‘I love your movies, I want to work for your company, can I work for free?’”

Sell Yourself

When inquiring about internships, paid or otherwise, the key is to make yourself sound as appealing as possible. At Little Magic Films, Assistant Manager of Development Mark Tenn handles the whole process of hiring interns. He emphasizes that students shouldn’t shy away from applying to internships if they think they lack the competitive edge of experience—a well-written cover letter and a firm handshake will take you far.

When assessing a student’s initial application, Tenn says, “Experience isn’t the only thing; more than anything else, it’s keen interest and enthusiasm for reading and watching films.” During the interview, Tenn looks mostly for indications of a good-natured personality. “Our office is small,” he says, “and I work with the students in close proximity, so even if they are intelligent, studious, and have the best grades in the world, if I don’t get along with them, it’s not going to work.”

Gutman agrees; he believes that his being “good with people” led his employers at Good Machine Productions to entrust him with entertaining the “high-maintenance” star of their major project—American Splendor’s irascible comic book writer, Harvey Pekar. By keeping Pekar busy and happy on a free day with trips to the Strand Book Store and conversations about jazz, Gutman not only made life simpler for the producers of the film, he also made a friend.

Wing It

Charm, however, isn’t everything. When someone hires you to do a job, they expect it to be done without complaints. When Handorf was asked to substitute for an absentee cameraman at a private Memphis production company, she was thrilled with the chance to prove herself. But when faced with a camera she’d never seen before, she crossed her fingers and pretended to know what she was doing. “I figured, ‘I can’t screw this up too much; if I just put it on auto and hold it straight, I should be fine,’” she recalls.

Most interns don’t have much knowledge of the job they’ve been hired to do, especially if it’s more than just administrative scut work. However, Handorf cautions against getting too creative when misrepresenting your skills, warning that interns should “only lie about stuff that you can actually back up at some point.”

Pay Your Dues

Once you’ve landed your internship, whether by honest means or otherwise, you may think it will be all smooth sailing after that. But now that paid entry-level jobs have been made obsolete by eager beavers willing to do anything for experience, interns can expect to work many hours with no monetary compensation and under less than desirable conditions. Gutman tells of nine-hour days spent stuffing envelopes (luckily there was a machine to do the licking), and months during which he slept only four hours a night because he was so busy working four jobs in order to keep his unpaid internship.

Brandon Woolf, CC ’05, thought he had it made when he weaseled his way into being a locations assistant on Woody Allen’s Anything Else. For the next three months he caught a 5:30 a.m. train from Long Island for the privilege of sitting in a broom closet to man the air-conditioning on a stifling hot day. Liz Maynes-Aminzade, BC ’06, felt tortured simply by the appalling inadequacy of the scripts she was asked to read at Little Magic. “One week I read three scripts in a row,” she says, “and they were all about werewolves.” But all the humiliation and discomfort is redeemed by the fact that after you pay your dues, it will all pay off.

Stay in Touch

The consensus is that an internship’s worth is really what you make of it, and learning to capitalize on connections is a major asset. Regardless, if you’re simply a cog in the wheel, if you’ve established a positive relationship with an employer, then maintain contact with them. Gutman calls up his old boss at Sony every six months, just to catch up, and when he’s looking for a job he sends personal e-mails to every employer he’s ever had.

Don’t worry about seeming exploitative by keeping in touch; Tenn encourages interns to do so. “Everyone has to break in somehow,” he says. “The way that you move up in the world with your work is through relationships, and that starts at the bottom. So we’re quite happy to help give references.” Of course, this only applies to the interns he likes. If you’ve done good work and were pleasant to interact with, employers will be happy to help you out if they can, or refer you to others in the industry when it comes time for you next internship or paying job.

“All in all, it was amazing, and all in all, it was horrible,” says Woolf of his experience on Anything Else. This seemingly contradictory reaction is what you can expect to find. Internships are hard to find, and harder to endure once you’ve found one. But if you want to make movies—whether in the capacity of development, production, post-production, or publicity—take a chance. All the interns agree: You’ve got nothing to lose.