Common Career Paths for Below the Line Roles
Posted on: Oct 31, 2024
Photo Credit: Media Photos // ShutterstockThe greatest joy of working in the entertainment industry is stressing out your parents. The second greatest joy is rising through the career ranks to achieve your ultimate dream position. Given the sometimes treacherous and uncertain waters of the business, the path isn’t always upward or straight—sometimes it’s a zig-zag rollercoaster ride with twists and turns you never saw coming.
That’s okay! Put your hands up, embrace the ride and remember: it could be so much worse. Let’s dive in and take a look at some common career paths for below-the-line positions in the entertainment industry.
Production Assistant (PA)
Commonly seen as a ground-floor position, the truth is, sets couldn’t survive without PAs, and it’s a fantastic way to cut your teeth in production. PAs are the Swiss Army knives of production: engaging in a slew of tasks from grabbing coffee to moving set pieces, organizing paperwork to holding cast. Since PAs are often involved in so many facets of production, they also have the most access and exposure to various jobs on-set. Therefore, they can learn the ropes in any department. Typically, PAs work their way up to positions such as assistant director, script supervisor, producer or even art department head.
Best Boy
By far, my favorite title for anyone on-set is “best boy”—not to be confused with Best Buy, Bob’s Big Boy the restaurant, or “bestest boy,” which is my dog, Willoughby. While the term might be a little outdated—women can serve as best boys—or best girls (it’s 2024, do you!). It’s generally considered a gender-neutral position for someone who assists the gaffer or key grip. The career trajectory for best boys and girls is pretty straightforward: they can eventually move up to key grip, responsible for the physical support of the camera, or to gaffer, who is in charge of all the lighting on-set. If you want to keep the title as you move up, feel free to call yourself “best gaffer”—just don’t tell anyone else that.
Art Department
Welcome to the magical world of the art department, the people who have the incredibly important responsibility of setting the aesthetic tone of the production. If you want to be happy with the way your production looks, be nice to the art department. The entry role is typically as an art department assistant or set decorator. Once you get some shoots under your belt, you can eventually work your way up to art director or set designer, with the ultimate goal of becoming a production designer, the person in charge of making all the artistic decisions.
Script Supervisor
An incredibly important and, quite frankly, underrated position on-set is script supervisor. They’re in charge of keeping track of continuity, best takes, camera angles and any missed lines of dialogue or action. The entry-level position is as a script supervisor assistant. Once you work your way up to script supervisor, you can target more involved positions like line producer, writer or production coordinator.
The beautiful thing about being in the entertainment industry is that, when it comes to career paths, the sky’s truly the limit. You might start off as a PA and wind up as a DP (Director of Photography). You might think you love makeup and then suddenly want to try your hand at acting. As long as you maintain a commitment to your craft and willingness to be open, your career will continue to progress. If you’re having difficulty landing any of these crew positions, a great idea is to start with a student or indie project. Because the stakes are typically lower, chances are you’ll have more creative freedom, and these productions are great places to learn about the positions and get some incredible experience.
Brendan Fitzgibbons is a comedy writer and actor living in Los Angeles. He’s written for Comedy Central, The Onion, NBC, HuffPost and Bravo. As an actor, he’s appeared on Comedy Central, MTV and “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.” His podcast, “Spiritual As****e” was named a Top Indie Podcast by Stitcher.
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