| PERG News: May 2024 |
When an entry-level employee starts work at a rental company, so much of the knowledge and skill essential to the smooth running of the operation is learned via on-the-job training. By “training” I don’t mean that you go in a classroom and someone says, “let’s go over this organizational diagram together so you understand what everyone does here,” or “I’m going to present to you a three-part lecture on how to design an Ethernet network for lighting,” or “I’m going to show you a power point on how to prep a multi-camera package.” More often, people first learn necessary skills informally by being assigned a job that is adjacent to someone else who has experience, watching and gleaning the knowledge by whatever the person will tell them, and by osmosis. A new employee has virtually no visibility into the bigger picture. When I worked for a lighting rental company in Chicago, fresh out of film school, I was completely unaware of what went on outside my own department. PERG’s EWI Program offers an opportunity to develop resources that all members can take advantage of, to give new employees a broader view of our industry and technology.
PERG’s 2024 EWI Coordinator, Alison Cupples, has a lot of experience mentoring young people, serving as a board member for Women in Film, New England. She also knows rental, having worked for 15 years as a Sales Account manager, and managing a branch office at High Output in Boston. As part of managing PERG’s Equitable Workforce Initiative, Alison will be working with PERG members to develop virtual training sessions that will be of universal interest to rental companies for their new employees. All PERG members will be notified when training sessions are scheduled, just as PERG has done with its popular Coffee Breaks, and employees from any member company are welcome to join the sessions.
One of the first sessions Alison is working on takes a 30,000-foot view of the landscape of a rental house. Trainees will hear from veteran rental owners and managers about the staff roles including the salesperson—the client liaison, translating the client’s needs into operational duties, acting as a consult as much as taking the client’s order, shop management, inventory management, accounting, marketing, and so on. Trainees will have an inside look at the rental company’s important relationships with the equipment manufacturers. By inviting the trainees to think about the bigger project of supporting productions, and everything that goes into it, the EWI program aims to help our members shape more informed, more valuable employees, and to spark an interest in rental as a long-term career.
Other EWI educational sessions will also focus on modern cinema technology. PERG is working with manufacturers to develop educational sessions on a wide variety of basic training, from color theory and lighting control to cameras and lenses to understanding the demands faced by the crew on set, and how the rental company supports them.
Many entry level employees apply for positions at a rental company because it is somewhere they can gain skills and knowledge about the equipment. Even someone with a college degree in filmmaking has not necessarily had much exposure to professional level equipment and filmmaking techniques. When I was in my twenties, entering the industry, the most knowledgeable and professional camera assistants I knew, who were young like me, had worked for a year or two at Panavision or one of the other respected rental companies. That was a real leg up. Working day in and day out with the equipment and servicing the 1st ACs who came in to prep their cameras, an entry-level person was soon set straight on the correct way to handle precious items and the experience vastly expanded their knowledge of the wide array of specialized equipment one must know to work in the industry.
The PERG EWI program, which is sponsored by Netflix, creates opportunities for people from underrepresented groups who have a strong desire the enter the motion picture/television industry. The 2024 program is currently accepting applications from rental companies that have positions to fill and from job seekers. The program reimburses the rental companies for all costs of wages and benefits for the first six months of employment. In exchange, the rental companies that volunteer to participate in the program provide the worker with a wide variety of training and experience and give the employee the 30,000-foot view of the rental industry that they need. For more information.
