And now your thought for the day, here’s a little something that all of us should be reminded of from time to time:
In the latest issue of Makeup Artist Magazine, there is a telling quote from Tami Lane where she is describing the hiring process for Hobbit: “Not only did we have to pre-paint the pieces we got from Weta, we also had to hair-punch the eyebrows on them. It was quite difficult to find people that could hair-punch a realistic set of eyebrows. I had to turn down a lot of fantastic makeup artists I wanted to work with, because I had to incorporate both jobs into one person.”
You start out as a total beginner, armed only with enthusiasm and sheer desperate willingness to succeed, and then you do some kind of training, whether self-taught or formal training, and then you are somehow ‘qualified’.
Ok, so the minute you actually DO any training to get your basic skills, you are going to realise that there is a long hard road ahead of you, which involves doing a lot of freebies or low-budget work to get the ACTUAL skills you need- i.e. the ability to put everything you have learned into practice, on real people, in an actual working environment under what is often immense pressure from time and budgetary constraints….
But what then? Surely after you have put in the hard yards and paid your dues, the world is your oyster, right?
I think somehow that most people believe that there is some kind of magic threshold, and that once you have reached it, everything is easy, you will get the jobs you want, work on the projects you aspire to be a part of, and live happily ever after…..
Well, as the above quote should tell you, no, the world doesn’t work that way.
Yes, nepotism exists, and people like to work with people they know and trust, which is fair enough, but a little bit of healthy competition never goes astray.
When it comes down to getting the job done, however, it doesn’t matter how long you have been working, or on what, or with who- the single biggest factors in choosing crew for any particular job remain the same regardless of your level and experience:
1. Can the person do the job or are we willing to train them to do the job?
2. Will the person do the job well?
3. Will we be able to work with this person and can this person work with us, over the long run?
Fall down on any one of those factors, and you’re no longer in the running. And then, beyond that, there are other factors like availability, location limitations, and the sheer brutal reality that you can only afford so many people in any given team.
For Hobbit the crucial factor was the first and simplest one- can the person do the job? They didn’t have time to train people to the level required in the very specific combination of skills that were required due to the particularly demanding nature of the type of work involved. Not a lot of people already had THAT particular combination to the level required, and so they didn’t get the gig, even if they were incredibly talented people in many other areas and the best fun in the world to work alongside on a hard job.
The truth is, you can’t be all things to all people. You can be a generalist, and ‘jack-of-all-trades’, but the flipside of that coin is the other half of the expression: ‘master-of-none’.
You can be a specialist, and amongst the best in your field in your chosen area, but that carries its own risks, amongst them, being pigeon-holed and never allowed to try anything else, no matter how good you might be, because people value what skills they know you possess far more than the ones they don’t know about.
Whatever your skill level, you won’t get hired unless you have the relevant experience and appropriate skills required to do that particular job.
So don’t take it personally if you get knocked back, no matter how badly you wanted it, maybe that job just wasn’t meant for you.
naomidlynch 