epictring wrote
I've come to my decision that if I were to go to the Academy, I would be going into post-production. Is there work in post production?
I'm probably heading overseas after studying.
Thanks for the reply.
Well, post-production (I'm guessing you're referring to video) has a lot of the same pro's and con's as sound I've found.
Here, your hours start at the break of dawn or earlier and you leave work when the work is done....which can be 17:00 on a good day, or after 21:00 on most.
The perk of video is that you get to travel a lot. But in post I doubt that will apply. I was involved in both.
Work again is tough to come by. I got in through a good samaritan in Cape Town that was willing to take me on. After hounding pretoria and jhb based production companies for months I settled on relocating to Cape Town just to get going. Also adding I had to lie a bit during the interview since what they teach you in terms of applications during study is not close to the vast amounts of systems and different applications used in the market. (eg: I studied using Adobe Premiere...not widely used I found later). If you are not proficient on a specific company's system of choice, it's bad news. (Not mentioning that most of these systems are so similar they may as well be released under the same name....but the employer does not see it that way)
From my experience the production companies are also not keen on offering internships, but the first thing they ask you is what experience you have. So, no experience, no work. So you ask yourself how you;re supposed to gain experience if no-one's willing to give you a break.
You may also end up freelancing. Now I've spoken to people that make it work but to get a call at 18:00 asking you to come in the next day for a freelance job somewhere and the guy "will discuss payment when you arrive" is just not on...and believe me, it happens more often than you'd think, even if you have an agency helping you book jobs! When freelancing you also sometimes get paid late. Like, 3 months late. Legally 3 months is the limit, and a lot of guys withhold payment till the last day or 2 of the 3 months since the work was done. This can seriously mess with your cashflow.
Lastly, for both sound and video the market is quite saturated, meaning even some of the bigger broadcasters such as Supersport and the like pay peanuts only after a 3 month unpaid probation.
But I would suggest if you're really keen on this to rather look at Pretoria Tech (University of Technology). Along with their study programmes they also place you in the practical environment from where you can start gaining experience while you study. A lot of the guys I know that went there (I didnt) ended up spending about 2 years with their internship companies after studying to gain extra experience. It's a great foot in the door.
