Thursday, October 21, 2004
Volunteer Your Way to The Top
Networking, that is one of the main keys into the animation business. The other really important one is of course animation. You have to have a skill to sell. You have to be able to deliver and on time. The question always is, how come the people that have their chops together still have such a hard time getting their foot in the door?
You have a pretty good idea where I am going with this, right? You not only have to know something, you also have to know somebody or a lot of somebodies.
Volunteer, I keep telling my students, volunteer at Women in Animation, Comic Con, film festivals, volunteer at ASIFA-Hollywood. I write extra credit right into my syllabus for my animation students that are smart enough to take advantage of the side door I keep trying to show them into the world of animation.
Some of them get it like one of my former Brooks College students. He not only volunteered to help a presenter at this year’s San Diego Comic Con but he also came back and did free caricatures in front of the ASIFA booth to draw in the customers.
Or like one of my current Cal State Fullerton students who has been at every membership meeting and AFI showing since she started my class. She even joined ASIFA and volunteered to work the ASIFA table at the monthly L.A. Comic Con.
So what is not to get. When you volunteer to work for an origination made up of the people from the industry you want to join, you end up working next to people from that industry who just might have a job for you some day. You also get to know a lot of people who know a lot of other people. Your face becomes known. When you walk in the interview you are not starting cold.
Most important, you get a chance to prove your dependability and worth in a non-critical situation. One of the big reasons people in film hesitate to take a chance on the untried newcomer is because of the size of the risks and budgets.
(When I say non-critical situation, I mean it is non-critical to the volunteer origination, no one is going to lose their job if you mess up. It is still very critical to you because if you flake on the volunteer job you are marked for life. I know a couple of people who volunteered for Comic Con a couple of years back who cancelled out at the last minute or just didn’t bother to show up. I’ll not be recommending them for jobs anytime soon. They might be nice people but I don’t trust them anymore. They would have been better off never volunteering if the first place.)
That all said, the monthly ASIFA-Hollywood Act of Membership Meeting is held the last Wednesday of each month. For more info go to: http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/current.html .
larry@agni-animation.com
¶ 5:29 PM
You have a pretty good idea where I am going with this, right? You not only have to know something, you also have to know somebody or a lot of somebodies.
Volunteer, I keep telling my students, volunteer at Women in Animation, Comic Con, film festivals, volunteer at ASIFA-Hollywood. I write extra credit right into my syllabus for my animation students that are smart enough to take advantage of the side door I keep trying to show them into the world of animation.
Some of them get it like one of my former Brooks College students. He not only volunteered to help a presenter at this year’s San Diego Comic Con but he also came back and did free caricatures in front of the ASIFA booth to draw in the customers.
Or like one of my current Cal State Fullerton students who has been at every membership meeting and AFI showing since she started my class. She even joined ASIFA and volunteered to work the ASIFA table at the monthly L.A. Comic Con.
So what is not to get. When you volunteer to work for an origination made up of the people from the industry you want to join, you end up working next to people from that industry who just might have a job for you some day. You also get to know a lot of people who know a lot of other people. Your face becomes known. When you walk in the interview you are not starting cold.
Most important, you get a chance to prove your dependability and worth in a non-critical situation. One of the big reasons people in film hesitate to take a chance on the untried newcomer is because of the size of the risks and budgets.
(When I say non-critical situation, I mean it is non-critical to the volunteer origination, no one is going to lose their job if you mess up. It is still very critical to you because if you flake on the volunteer job you are marked for life. I know a couple of people who volunteered for Comic Con a couple of years back who cancelled out at the last minute or just didn’t bother to show up. I’ll not be recommending them for jobs anytime soon. They might be nice people but I don’t trust them anymore. They would have been better off never volunteering if the first place.)
That all said, the monthly ASIFA-Hollywood Act of Membership Meeting is held the last Wednesday of each month. For more info go to: http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/current.html .
larry@agni-animation.com
¶ 5:29 PM
