Previously, I’ve said that you shouldn’t wait around for the “perfect” job. But when it comes to internships, the opposite is true.
Know You’re Worth…less
The time to take an internship is when you have no experience, no skills, and no value to offer. In other words, when you’re a college student.
I say that not to be harsh, but to make you self-aware.
There are a lot of qualified, knowledgeable, and hard-working assistants looking for work in Hollywood, so studios and production companies have little incentive to hire someone without those qualifications. The best way to gain real-world experience is, unfortunately, by working for free as an intern.
But despite all that, there’s no reason you can’t be choosy about your internships.
Know Your Worth
While you should be learning and growing at an internship, some employers make too much out of it. They act like they are doing you a favor by deigning to allow you to work in their office… for free.
Minimum wage laws functionally make it illegal to hire someone who produces value that’s less than $17(ish) per hour, but still more than zero. What this means, though, is that if you’re reasonably intelligent and industrious, interning at $0/hour is a very good deal for the company.
When you look at it from that perspective, you’ll realize you have some (not a lot, but some) bargaining power. Don’t just take any ol’ internship and allow the boss to walk all over you. Make sure you find an internship position that suits your temperament, abilities, and career goals.
You’ll still need to apply to a lot of internships, because there are a lot of people in the same spot as you. But that doesn’t imply you should take any intern position.
Create Your Own Internship
Okay, we’ve all seen the jokes about just walking into an office with a resume and getting a job…
Now, of course, you can’t literally do that. But what you can do is cold email any company, producer, director, writer, whatever.1 Tell them you’re in college, you’re excited to learn from them because of all the great work they do, and oh, yeah, you’ll work for free. It’s an impossible deal to beat.
I know someone who got his first foot in the door by contacting a showrunner he admired and offering to wash her car every day, just to be around the production. She didn’t make him actually go through with it, but she liked his attitude, so she let him intern in the writers’ room. From there, it was a short hop to being her assistant.
He’s a producer now.
As I said in that earlier post: “These places hire when they need somebody. They don't just have open calls for jobs that don't exist.” But an internship is different. They may not be actively looking for interns, but if someone is ambitious enough and resourceful enough to reach out to them blindly, they might just take you on anyway.
Whether or not that internship turns into a real job down the line is another question, but you can’t really help that.
You can find a surprising amount of contact info either on their union website, or by signing up for a free month on IMDb Pro.
Internships weren't much of a thing when I arrived in Hollywood nearly (gulp) 50 years ago, but getting started by working for free certainly was in fashion. Given that I knew nothing about the film industry -- other than that a camera, DP, script, and actors were required -- that seemed fair. Truth be told, I had nothing to offer any production beyond youth, a good attitude, and the willingness to work as hard as necessary to get started, so why should they pay me?
I was fortunate. After a month of driving the set dec truck in pre-production, then working as a set PA during the first weeks of filming, I was offered the assistant editing gig for $50/week (roughly $275 in 2025 dollars), which was a life-saver. Although I soon learned that editing would definitely not be my path through Hollywood (I was born to work on set), landing my first paid gig was huge ... and the contacts I made on that project led directly to the next 40 years of my career.
Nobody should work for free any longer than necessary, of course, but when you have nothing to offer beyond raw youthful enthusiasm, you take what you can get.
It's all part of paying your dues.
Internships should be a two way street. I work for free; you invest in giving me learning and experience. Too often, this contract is not respected.