Schools and colleges · The careers talk
This is the careers talk we give, written out in full so you can give it without us.
A large production carries roughly two hundred job titles. Most adults, including most teachers, can name five: director, actor, producer, camera operator and possibly writer. Everything else is invisible from outside, and that invisibility is itself the barrier. You cannot want a job you have never heard of.
So 168 of them are on this page: the titles, the alias each job is called by on the day, what it does, roughly what it pays and how people get in. Take it, reorder it, put it on your own slides. There is no licence to read and no attribution required.
The pay bands
Bands, so that one number never has to stand in for a whole career.
Every role below carries a band rather than a single figure, because a day rate depends on the budget, the agreement, the region and the person. The bands come from published union rate cards and are indicative day rates before tax, on a scripted drama or feature, and reviewed annually.
| Band | What it means |
|---|---|
| A | Trainee and entry grades |
| B | Assisting and skilled trade grades |
| C | Fully skilled craft grades |
| D | Senior and supervising grades |
| E | Head of department, negotiated per production |
A day is ten hours before overtime, and a working week on a feature is commonly fifty to sixty hours. The rate-by-rate detail, with the card and the year each figure came from, is on the pay page, and the picture of freelance income — the gaps between jobs, the tax, and why a good day rate is not the same as a good year — is on it as well.
Low budget, unscripted television, commercials and short-form all pay differently, sometimes substantially less. Say that to a class rather than letting them read one number as a promise.
Camera
Camera department: applied optics, carried out at speed.
The most competitive department to enter and the one that most rewards a physics student. Focus pulling is distance estimation and depth of field calculation, performed in a second, in the dark, with a moving subject.
Lighting and electrical
Lighting and electrical: electrical engineering, on a deadline.
An electrical qualification is worth more here than a media degree. The department calculates load, designs distribution, and is legally responsible for the power feeding a building full of people.
Grip and rigging
Grip and rigging: load calculation and structural work, under time pressure.
The least documented department in the industry, and the one with the most direct route in from a trade. If a student is doing engineering or construction and likes solving physical problems, this is the answer.
Sound
Sound, on the day and afterwards: acoustics, radio frequency and performance.
Production sound is acoustics and radio frequency coordination under pressure. Post sound is a separate career with its own ladder, and the two rarely swap.
Art, construction and props
Art department and construction: design, technical drawing and the trades.
The largest department on a big production, and the one that employs the widest range of skills. A carpentry, plastering, welding or CAD qualification is a direct route in, with no film experience required at all.
Special effects, prosthetics and stunts
Special effects: mechanical engineering with a safety case attached.
Physical effects, animatronics and pyrotechnics are engineering disciplines with statutory licensing. This is where a design technology student who likes mechanisms should be pointed.
Costume, hair and make-up
Costume, hair and make-up: pattern cutting, chemistry and continuity.
Textiles, chemistry and an unforgiving continuity discipline. Cutters, makers and dyers are in genuine short supply, which is unusual enough in this industry to be worth telling a student.
Production, assistant directing and the office
Production and assistant directing: logistics, money and people, at scale.
If a student is the one who organises everybody else, this is their department. It is also the one an accountant, a travel agent, an administrator or a licensed driver can walk into as a mid-career change.
Post-production, visual effects and virtual production
Post, visual effects and virtual production: software engineering with a camera attached.
The largest concentration of computing, maths and physics jobs in the sector. A student doing computer science who thinks the only option is a bank should read this table twice.
What a careers talk leaves out
What a careers talk usually leaves out.
A student told the tidy version, who then meets the real one, concludes that the failure is theirs. So we say all of this out loud, and you should too.
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Routes in
Four ways in, and only one of them involves a degree.
Straight from school, at sixteen or eighteen
Runner, trainee, data wrangler, roto artist, render wrangler, dailies operator, camera prep at a rental house. All real first jobs, all paid, none of them requiring a degree.
Through a trade or a technical qualification
Electrical, carpentry, plastering, welding, scaffolding, rigging, hairdressing, accountancy, HGV. The ticket is the qualification; the film part is learned on the job.
Through an apprenticeship or a trainee scheme
Formal schemes exist and are advertised nationally, though there are far fewer places than applicants. Timing and persistence do most of the work.
Through further or higher education
Necessary for some roles, particularly in visual effects, engineering and colour science, and optional for most craft grades. Choose the course for the workshop time, not the prospectus.
Next
Take the talk, or have us brief your staff.
Everything above is free for a teacher to use with a class. If you would rather a working technician took your careers and teaching staff through it first, that is a booking, and the formats are on the workshops page.
