Press Release Summary: Why is arts and entertainment different and important compared to 9 to 5, why does it take special skills and experience, and how to find a gig?
Press Release Body: For people who cannot do 9 to 5 corporate or factory work, have unusual cognitive or creative skills and talent, making a living is a bitch. It's not that these people are any less valuable or intelligent; in fact it is quite the opposite, which makes their very being question or loathe of stereotypical society and corporate culture. Which is why they can't do 9 to 5. But they do provide something else, equally and in some ways more important than working in a corporate office, retail store, or semi automated factory.
What they can provide is culture, social identity, and mediums for diverse peoples to get out and meet each other, experience new ideas, get inspired, regain hope, and become conscious communities, virtually and in real life. A mouthful but it's true.
Good arts and entertainment is healthy for society by de-stressing and inspiring people on mass levels. Sometimes making tens of millions of people in the space of a half hour TV program or 3 minute donate to charity. Sometimes making a few thousand people, in the space of a 3-day festival, think about changing their lifestyle. Sometimes making 20 people, in the space of a single 5-minute spoken word or street theatre piece, have a new appreciating for another culture.
To do that needs people with a special way of looking at the world and society to create something amazing out of almost nothing. Being able to think out of the box is just the start; being able to make it happen and it compliment or make society think is quite another. Being able to see society from a different angle and having some experience in life hones the creative and pragmatic consciousness. Schoolbooks and classrooms don't cut it, because in real life not everything goes according to plan. Until one has been through the "not according to plan" situations they are rarely able to come up with solutions by themselves, because they haven't been there yet.
To give an analogy or example: In my fieldwork I consult on and co-manage events and festivals in San Francisco this past 8 years, and previously Australia and other countries. I have festivals that I've worked with for years, plus I keep an eye out for new projects. Sometimes I find projects that have potential; sometimes I go through a month of emails, phone calls, and meetings only to find it's a crock of wishful thinking or just a great web site and name-dropping etc. Each time it's been a crock the folks have had little or no experience; each time it's had potential the folks have had moderate to full experience.
Old enough to understand the rules and politics, experienced enough to prevent problems, forward thinking enough to homework on what makes it hip in it's demographic. From an employer's side of the desk, these very important points to consider when choosing co-management and creative staff or partners. It is also valid when choosing crew and talent. But to get to that level of value to an employer and to keep honing one's craft one needs paid gigs in the field to have somewhere to sleep, eat, and stay healthy to be productive on the job. And this brings up the big question and the subject of this article.
How to find a paid gig in arts and entertainment? It's a million to one chance, even if you go on reality television or get degree in film editing. Not because of skills but because not everybody thinks out of the 9 to 5 box or can look at something objectively, such as society, while tuning in to it and turning it on; let alone without doing damage, now or in the future.
A real life example of creating damage for the future: San Francisco in the 1960's, the folks that fought for our freedom of expression also set up a tradition of free events, free food, free shops and free other things. Of course all this free stuff didn't last, but the expectation of many San Franciscans that everything should be free still remains, including free arts and entertainment. This negatively impacts local arts and entertainment industry today as hardly anybody pays to see good original work or show, so artists and producers have to go to Los Angeles or New York or London to make a living. San Francisco does see a lot of cutting edge stuff in its experimental stages, but rarely gets to see it fully honed and polished. The other sad thing is that San Franciscan creative folk like to preach that they don't do art for money, but they expect their crew and talent to work for free, attend all rehearsals and meetings, and supply their own costumes and guitar strings without compensation. Consequently there are a lot of frustrated artists and musicians with day jobs, as well as neurotic forty and fifty year olds still waiting for their big break. As anybody with long time working experience of San Francisco arts scene will tell you, it's not exactly a situation that promotes bar raising quality or loyalty to a production.
But I'm getting off track again, so lets get back to finding a paid gig. Research and homework, yes, get your hot little hands on a computer, send out your resume to gigs appropriate to your work experience and skill, update your resume with each gig, even the unpaid gigs, network, and chat people up. These are all good procedures to follow as an old hand or beginner.
If you don't have at least 2 years hands on experience and worked on at least 6 different projects in that time, you need to intern some more to be valuable on a paid gig. The reason is that the industry is it's own set of psychology books, guidelines, and rules, and it takes at least that long just to understand that it really is different. Plus there are safety issues.
Gathering any number of people together in one place has safety issues; add a bunch of high-voltage machinery, lights, speakers, and special effects, creates a whole bunch more safety issues. And that's not event taking the audience taken into account. Hence well thought out preventative measures and logistics always need to be in place and the only way to be able to even think to do that and how to do it is to have prior hands-on experience. But that's not all of it, not by any means.
A show has to pay for certain hard costs, such as equipment rentals, permits, marketing, venue hire, and headliners, before it can pay it's staff, crew, and talent. Even for a one-night improv cabaret this can add up to thousands of dollars. Ergo a show has to be run as a business and staff, plus all concerned, must understand business planning, budgeting, priorities, procedures, and legal protocols, and executing it all within allotted timelines. And even that's not all of it.
Then there is connecting the dots and making sure the dots are not rotten or short-circuiting. As I alluded to earlier in this text, not everybody is meant to be in this industry nor is healthy for this industry. Understanding egos, politics, and the opportunities for others to undermine you or your project is also crucial. Egos and politics are like onions, the more layers that reveal themselves the more layers there are to be revealed. And they don't all reveal themselves at once or just because you need to know about them. So again one needs to be working in a local scene or industry for some time to get a glimpse of what might be a situation or person to be circumvented in the future. It's a lot of nuances to think about that cannot be all revealed or all understood in just a few months.
The other reason for interning for a couple years is to establish contacts and references. In show biz you are only as good as you last gig and, unlike 9 to 5, the more gigs under your belt the better. This makes you valuable to a production and an employer. Constant learning and research must be in effect at all times, and the WWW has provided ways to get access to expert knowledge and shortcut learning some of the information.
Reading discussion boards, reading and knowing what is in a contract or hiring agreement, reading what other productions are hiring for, watching how-to videos, reading tip sheets and industry news, and reading other peoples' resumes. Theses are ways to gather basic information on what different types of productions hire; what kind of staff, crew, and talent; and what each of their jobs are and how it might relate to your job. Websites like Gigslist.org have libraries of arts job sites; tip sheets, how-to videos, entertainment contracts, funding resources, as well as job boards, production directory and classifieds to post your resume.
Arts and Entertainment industry dedicated web sites provide more quality information and resources than general classified sites. General public classifieds or job sites don't support the arts and are not able to give you information and resource libraries about other aspects of the field or related fields you are perusing. Their traffic is not industry dedicated so there is a lot of off-topic trash and spam to wade though. They don't provide quality discussion boards, or information on where to get funding, nor resource libraries or a production directory to post your info and web site.
The other problem is that the industry-dedicated sites need your traffic and they need you to post your resumes, jobs, shows, news, and discussions and for you to link to their sites. If you don't they fade away and you will be left with non-industry dedicated sites full of trash and no resources. Imagine a world without sites like Gigslist.org and its Arts Job Bible. You would never find out where else to look for a paid gig in film, or what grants there are for a music recital, or see funny videos on "How to be English" for actors. Plus there would be fewer and fewer grants and all the paid jobs and cool internships would go back to being strictly word of mouth or posted on sites that don't support the arts industries.
I'm not saying you don't find paid gigs on the general sites. I'm saying that by surfing and posting to industry dedicated sites like Giglist.org you help those sites be able to expand and improve so you won't want to go anywhere else. This is the big dilemma for arts industry dedicated sites today, they need your support, they need you to post on them and surf them and join their mailing list. In turn they will provide more quality content and information for you. And this is how you find a quality paid gig in arts and entertainment.
By Deborah Paulino Festival Consultant Web Producer http://www.Gigslist.org
2022
