Location: 5258 Lougheed Highway Burnaby, British Columbia

21 days between October 5 th and December 8 th Working 7-8 hours/day Total hours 166

Sim Video offers High End Video Equipment, Displayable Graphics, and Data Management to TV shows and Movies. Sim has over 1000 employees internationally as Camera Techs, Department Managers, Playback Operators, Engineers, and More Sim’s target market is high end productions (commercials, TV shows, and Movies) where it doesn’t make sense to buy your own equipment. There are a plethora of other rental houses like Panavision, Fairmont Camera, and more. They offer mostly the same products, but Sim provides equipment made by our own engineers that productions prefer using. Sim’s structure has 1 General Manager, 3 Department Managers, 1 general accountant, 2 department accountants, and several camera preps and color correctors. (this is only the Burnaby location.)

My Duties My duties were to maintain: the equipment cases load and move equipment for any TV shows or Movies that came in and setting up all the equipment for any show that came in.

Skills I Learned I learned how to properly wrap cables. How to set up a film industry standard tripod, camera, O’Conner, and Lambda Head. How to calibrate monitors on set. And on set etiquette

B If I had to Grade myself I’d give myself a…

My First Day on the Job I spent my morning meeting everyone in all the departments. I was then shown how to test cables and spent the greater part of the day testing the cable coming back from a tv show. After that I prepped some hard drives for shipping.

My Best Day My best day on the job was when I went up to the digital side of the company and played with the editing and color correcting software all day while watching bits and pieces of show that won’t be aired on tv till March or April.

My Worst Day My worst day at work was when I came back to work still sick and had to spend the day using strong smelling cleaning supplies while I could barely stay awake.

Funniest Thing The funniest thing that ever happened was when a truck driver came by to pick up some equipment and he told us that the guys from his last delivery had “been eating retard sandwiches.”

If I could redo anything at my work placement I would take more time to meet all the people who came through Sim Video to see if I couldn’t make more contacts and get some more jobs in the future.

What surprised me about this company The size of the company (6 international locations) The amount of equipment they have access to How many movies and tv shows the company had been involved with

If I had the opportunity I would definitely take this placement again because of the experience with the equipment and the people, who can get me more jobs and placements in the future.

To make this placement better for students I’d simply recommend more variety or a bit more supervision. You have to find things to do or you end up doing a lot of nothing.

There is no formal education necessary for working at a rental house, but any film experience or going to film school is an asset.