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Guest Contribution by Timothy Muirhead
Although we all like to talk about sound work as a very creative discipline it is also a technical one. Universities and other post secondary institutions really have their hands full trying to teach both sides of the craft – the hows and the whys. Most come up short on one side or the other and that is why the industry has come to rely so heavily on the concept of the internship to complete the educations of those just entering the work force. I know the work placement I did at the conclusion of my time in film school taught me more in 4 months then I was able to absorb in the previous three and a half years I spent in classrooms. The schools narrow it down to the individuals who are dedicated, and give them time to focus on the craft and decide if it is indeed right for them. It teaches perseverance – but the internship is where you really learn the trade.
As the business model for audio post-production has been changing in the last decade, internships aren’t fitting into the system in the same way. The days of large studios with open doors to new graduates are pretty much over. Some big studios have been going under and many current professionals find themselves working freelance out of small one-room studios or even their basements/spare bedrooms. This makes taking on interns much more difficult for many seasoned veterans of our business.
At the same time there really is an important principle we all have to remember. Every successful mixer/editor/sound designer had someone help them get their foot in the door when they started out. Maybe even a mentor who shaped our idea of what the business should be, who shared a work ethic or philosophy, who opened up our ears and set us up to succeed ourselves. We all have a responsibility to pay that debt forward. But how? Simply having space for another person to work can be a major roadblock if you are working out of your house. But the same advancements in technology that allow for the freelance world to boom can be used to our advantage with interns as well.
One path that needs a lot more attention is the idea of a virtual internship. The basic concept is the same as a traditional internship, but instead of being in the same building the mentorship exists completely online. In order for this to work the student/intern must already have (or have access to) a basic sound editing set up. Skype, email and file sharing are used so tasks can be assigned, projects can be passed back and forth and questions can be asked and answered. The upside is you won’t be cramped into your small studio space with the intern and it is highly adaptable to changing schedules – being in the studio from 9-5 together is not as necessary. The downside is your intern can not make lunch runs or brew your coffee for you. Many industries are using this concept very effectively. Publishing, marketing and many more sectors are up and running with this model already. Sound Designer Tim Prebble solicited for applications in 2009 for his own unique version of a virtual internship (and blogged about it). So there is a precedent in the pro audio community.
I corresponded with Michał Fojcik about his experience as one of the students in Prebble’s internship program. Fojcik is based in Poland and Prebble is working out of New Zealand but they found ways to overcome distance and time-zone challenges through online communication. Michał’s internship, shared with a small group of junior editors, mainly took place via an open email group, where Prebble introduced and elaborated on selected topics and the group took up those discussions, sharing questions and engaging in problem-solving interactions online. Fojcik described the time as “a milestone for me, changing my way of working on sound for film. I was very excited when we were starting but how it turned out [was] even better than I expected.”
That was back in 2009, but just this week on a LinkedIn sound design group a sound editor working on his first feature reached out to the community for someone to mentor him through the experience. Within a day he had two different people answer the call. I also regularly see recent graduates post demo reels for critique by the online community and get fantastic feedback and encouragement.
So there is some of this going on but I have not read or heard of many other audio-related long term virtual internship programs since Tim Prebble blogged about his version. Is anyone else out there doing this? If so let us know about it! If not, why has it not caught on further? Online discussion forums are now allowing newbies to interact with experienced professionals world-wide, to solve specific problems, to offer one-off opinions, but without the intensive interaction that dedicated mentorships provide, are we allowing the most important part of our accumulated knowledge to slip away?
It is easy to get caught up in the day to day and feel like our schedules are full to capacity. But we have to remember that someone helped shape us, and we can pass on the best of what we have learned over the years. We just have to figure out how in this changing business.
Timothy Muirhead is a sound editor based out of Toronto and also co-host of the Tonebenders sound design podcast. You can reach him via twitter @azimuthaudio.
A great article, Timothy.
It’s an excellent point that the way most of us work (at home studios) is no longer conducive to having interns in our workspace. Just the same the need to collaborate and share knowledge is important.
These are the tools I use
– TeamViewer – desktop viewing
– GoogleDrive – Word and Excel sharing without the hassle of keeping track of email copies
– Skype – group video meetings, chats
– DropBox – large file sharing
– Basecamp – tracking task assignment and completion
The trick is to keep everyone inspired, engaged, motivated, and busy in the downtime between communication.
The size of audio files and the required upload time kind of causes a lag in collaboration, too.
That being said, working with virtual interns is something I’d definitely like to try in the future.
Cool post! Together with Michal I was one of the other interns on that virtual internship that Tim Prebble did in 2009 (damn was it that long ago!!). I must say that although I had kind of made a decision to aim my career towards film sound in the months or year prior to the internship…it was really that internship that a) supercharged me with motivation and love for what is now my career b) taught me more in 2 months than I learned in two years in my audio engineering studies (granted my studied were not focused in audio post production).
I have never even met Tim in person yet I would say I basically owe my career to him! Most of what I know or how I do things are based on the thought processes and workflows he shared and discussed with us on that internship. We never even worked on any actual project during our internship and never sent him any of our work to get feedback on…but the information I obtained set me up to take off on my career with a basic starting level of confidence and awareness. I am for ever grateful to him for that and hope to one day be able to do the same for someone else.
It is true that it is becoming less and less usual for internships in the older sense of the term to happen…but I vey much see the value in this idea of virtual internships and using the technology and facilities available today to allow for such remote collaboration not only in doing freelance work but also in mentoring and teaching new people.
I think that’s stretching it too far. It is common in this industry (at least in Germany, don’t know about Canada) not to pay interns. If you now demand to have interns already having equipment (having a basic sound editing set up) you are shifting part of the entrepreneur risk down to the bottom line of the food chain.
Referring to it as an internship isn’t accurate, as what he did was more akin to mentorship. Just look at Enos’ description. I don’t think anyone would argue that a student or young professional MUST have equipment for this sort of scenario (though with tools like Reaper, which are free for non-commercial uses, that argument starts to become moot), ACCESS on the other hand certainly does help (note also that ownership is only one form of access). The important point here is to provide more opportunities for young designers to be fostered and directed. Timothy is trying to start a conversation towards that end.
Henning – when I started out, to own a recorder, mics or even the most basic sound editing setup was literally impossible. That is no longer true – a portable recorder + a not recent mac + a secondhand mbox with protools and you have enough equipment to learn a LOT.
Frankly if someone applying for an intern hadn’t even made that commitment I would suggest they have too much to learn & will frankly waste most of their internship learning HOW to use an app, rather than WHY. Whats the big risk in someone investing their savings in their hobby???? Doesn’t everyone do that?
Anyway I’ve had a few emails asking when my next internship is – I have no plans for any future internships and have briefly explained why here:
http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/re-interns
re labelling
The first blog post I ever made was “Need a mentor?’ – it explains what I was aiming to achieve..
http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/need-a-mentor
afaik it is/was a mentor/intern relationship, but heres the thing: the form it takes is totally up to the people involved. I have had local actual interns & trainees before, and was interested in pursuing something quite different to that.
I had forgotten that original post, Tim. Thanks for clarifying!
I wonder whether the new Avid Cloud Collaboration tool due to be released with Pro Tools 12 would help facilitate the online internship model?
Will be interesting to see!
The ratio of audio students to available jobs (and internships included) is so skewed, one would need to think twice before joining the industry. Look at company job postings. For every 30 software developer openings there are 8 visual artists jobs and 0 – 1 audio production jobs. That is a scary bar chart to look at if we made one.
Visual artists need one computer, a tablet and Adobe Photoshop with free brushes to get going. Audio artists need a computer, Pro Tools, speakers, headphones, a MIDI controller, expensive plugins, expensive recording equipment, etc. to get going.
It’s a much more expensive job with less opportunities available and less consideration for production budgeting.
My point is this should not be so, and the professional community is capable of changing that.
– Offer MANY MORE paid internships (whether in person or virtual.)
– Offer MANY MORE apprentice level jobs (talent + passion >= experience.)
– Reduce hardware and software prices. (Students have no income.)
– Let production and management understand that audio delivers 50% (at least) of the product experience, and deserves much more than 1 – 6% of budget. Make every director understand like Christopher Nolan.
Your points read off like a list aimed at the largest game developers. While some of them may be in the position to act on those, there are many smaller developers (not to mention independently owned companies working in different media, like linear post) where the bottom-line budget and cost of keeping the doors open simply do not allow for a higher instance of paid internships or apprentice level jobs. This is not an attack on your ideas, I’m merely trying to provide some perspective. I know many audio post houses that actively try to foster new talent. There are limits to what they can do though. In fact, there have been a number of times in my career where those types of companies were looking to hire junior positions as opposed to people like me. They could only afford someone with more experience on a freelance basis when things got hairy. Rare was the opportunity for full time employment; so it’s not something that afflicts only the entry and junior level jobs. Also, while there may be a higher demand for those other positions you mentioned, there’s typically also a (roughly) proportional growth in the number of people trained and applying for those jobs. The industries we work in are highly competitive. If anything, that’s one of the things I think students and graduates don’t have an accurate understanding of…and it’s unfortunately very hard to get across in its full weight until they’ve experienced it themselves.
I’m not so sure about those requirements. When I started to work commercially back in 2010 I only had a laptop, a 25 key Midi Controller, a Zoom H4n, a pair of decent headphones and an old version of Adobe Audition. I slowly invested in better gear/software as I grew and at no point I felt that it was impossible for me to do my work.
Film is also not the only avenue into the industry. Nowadays it’s easy to get in touch with video production studios, marketing studios, game developers and any other professionals who might use an audio intern or who don’t even know they need to hire an audio professional. There’s also a host of learning resources available to anyone who’s interested.
At any rate, the picture is not a grim as you paint it. The barrier to entry is already low enough.
Yes Shaun…as you say the internship with Tim was more of a mentorship really. I mean I am yet to meet him in person…we were all in other countries far from New Zealand so ofcourse the more standard day to day activities that interns tend to do like making coffees, dong errands and cleaning up was never part of what we did. It was really straight mentoring. Also, due to the nature of the internship there would be times where Tim would get busy so we would not be that active for a couple of weeks and then pick up.
One thing that was for sure was that though we did learn things like the thought process behind laying out sessions and tracking/editing/etc… a lot of the focus was placed on storytelling, script analysis, etc… We were all expected to be using Protools (as that is what Tim uses) and we were all expected to be able to use Protools with no problems…this wasn’t a place where he going to be teaching people Protools! We were all also expected to have access to or own some form of a Protools rig…however at no point did we ever do any work with or for him…nor did we even send over our stuff for him to look at…
Anyways, I really feel that it can easily be done…these remote internships that is. Ofcourse I will always believe that there is no substitute for being in the same space and learning on the job,etc… But in the current climate of how the industry is run…these sort of remote collaborations make a lot of sense and happen already in the freelance working side of things…so why not apply the same thinking to internships…or mentorships…
I think there should not only be a discussion about the value of internships for both parties and the industry in general, but also a discussion of the very real exploitation of interns in audio post and in media in general. I am very fortunate to have had some great mentors, and some great internships. I have also gone through some terrible ones, where emotional, sexual, and $$ abuse/exploitation occurred. I think the current model of unpaid, unregulated internships has got to go. I think there are so many reasons to offer at least a stipend. I understand that pockets aren’t deep, but the talent you are bringing in on an unpaid internship isn’t necessarily the best, just the few who can afford to not get paid. I fear that not even seeing your interns on a daily basis might just make it easier to exploit them.
Thanks for starting this dialogue. I’d like to share my experience. When I got into the business in 1990, I had several co-workers come to me and say; “stick with me kid, and I’ll teach you everything I know”. Because of this generosity, I have always been compelled to spend proper time mentoring my interns. Unfortunately what I see in the industry today are companies that abuse interns for menial jobs to fill voids in staffing. I have an intern starting in a few weeks and I have painstakingly created an extensive lesson plan for her. This lesson plan goes beyond signal flow and sound design, into the realm of what the audio schools don’t teach. Client interaction, studio etiquette, running and marketing a business, will all be covered. One of my long time friends (and one of my original mentors) from the first company I worked for wrote an amazing book that accomplishes filling in the blank spots. Its the only book I know of its kind. I highly recommend it to audio interns and people entering the business. Even though it comes from a picture editing perspective, all filmmaking disciplines are taken into consideration.
Nonlinear Editing: Storytelling, Aesthetics, & Craft by Bryce Button
Future plans for my company, AUDIOPRONETWORK.COM will encompass virtual mentoring, as I feel it is all but lost in our industry. This is so important to me because I believe it will make the industry better for everyone, and giving back feels good.
There are some important federal laws that should be taken into consideration when taking on an intern. This excerpt is from Forbes.
Under federal law, every employee in America is entitled to a minimum wage, additional compensation for overtime and certain other benefits. An employment relationship will also have consequences for the employer relating to worker’s compensation, discrimination laws, employee benefits, state labor laws and unemployment insurance coverage. For these requirements not to apply, the employment relationship must fall under applicable legal exemptions.
Here are the six factors considered by the Court:
1. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.
2. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
3. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.
5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.
6. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.