So You Want to Be a Painter… Are You Sure?

Every few weeks I get an email from someone who wants to know how to get into this business as a scenic artist or set painter for film.  So, because I don’t usually have the time to repeatedly answer these emails, I thought I’d go over that question and try to answer it as best I can. This will take two blog entries, and we’ll continue with the conclusion next Monday. I’ll try to be practical and thorough with my answers.

My first suggestion is to think about it carefully.  Is being a painter the absolute apex and dreamed-of final culmination of your career path?  Is that what you really want?  Because, unlike a lot of “beginners’ jobs”, like PA’s or set dressers, or personal assistants, who can all move up to any number of different careers once they get going and prove themselves to be reasonably capable and dedicated human beings, once you establish yourself as a painter, you will almost never, ever be able to redefine yourself.  You will always be a painter, for the rest of your film career.

I learned too late that I wasn’t going to be fulfilled if I just painted on films for the rest of my life.  I had to mix it up, see what I could do, get creative.  Since I was a painter already, though, those hopes and plans were pointless.  Everybody I worked with knew I was a painter, and there was no way anyone in the Business would un-see me as a painter and consider hiring me to be something else.

I had to leave LA and start over completely; ask for work on an uber-low budget film, and get lucky enough to be hired by a director and producer who accepted me as a potential art director.  More importantly, neither of them knew me as a good, experienced painter.  Because if they had seen me as that particular thing, I would have been out of consideration for art director, prop master, or even PA.  And they wouldn’t have been able to afford me as a good, experienced painter with their budget, so therefore, I wouldn’t have had a place on their film in any job capacity.

I think it’s safe to say that for most scenic painters, they are going to be living under a glass ceiling and they’re going to be further constrained by glass walls.  They are always going to be painters, not art directors, not DP’s, not directors, not producers, not even propmakers.  Painters.

So do you love painting more than any other job you can think of doing in the film business?

Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to maybe work in the camera department?  They get paid much more than painters do.  Or what about working as a grip or an electrician?  You don’t need nearly as much training, and they get paid more than painters do.  If you work in the production office, on that side of things you have the potential to advance into producing, which is right up there with the director, hierarchy-wise.  How about directing?  Are you sure you don’t want to direct?

Or, what about set dressing?  If you work as a set decorator or a buyer, you’re going to make much more money than a painter, and guess what?  You won’t have to learn thousands of painting tricks with hundreds of different poisonous substances while worrying about toxic effects on you and your unborn children and whether your carbon and pollution job footprint will grow too big to ever be erased within you and your grandchildren’s lifetimes.

And then there are the real artists of the art department—the art director and the production designer and the set designers and the draftspeople.  Are you absolutely certain you don’t want to ease into one of these positions? To all intents and purposes they are the ones creating the film, while you are going to merely follow their orders, trying to do everything they ask in as short a time and as efficient a way as possible.  Also (do I really need to say it?), they get paid more than painters.

I almost forgot to mention writing the script.  Don’t you want to do that, instead? Don’t you want to make $100,000 plus per film?  No painter on earth, even an Oscar-winning painter (I really did know one, and he only made so-so money), is going to close in on six figures per show, and that’s just the bottom, the first-time lowest rung for writers.  It’s hard to break into writing, sure.  And you need to have talent, as well as incredible luck simply to make your first sale.  Hmmm… So, okay, maybe you’re smart not to think about getting into screenwriting.

But how about being the script person, who is the right hand of the director and really holds the essence of the film in her hands at every moment because she knows every beat and timing sequence and each action for every scene of the whole shebang.  Needless to say, she gets paid more than a painter.  You have to get training and experience for that, sure, but if you’re smart and hardworking, you’ll make a very good living and be part of the inner circle: director, DP and actors, privy to all the action at the eye of the storm, all through filming.

And you might also want to consider the editing side of the film equation.  They get paid lots of money, too, and they are quite often above the line, which is something you, a painter, will never be.  No, even if you have the talent and genius of Van Gogh, Matisse, and David Hockney combined, if you are a set painter, you will live your life below the line, and nobody will ever suspect you are an incredible artistic phenomenon.

So, are you still convinced that painting for films is your heart’s desire and true calling above all others?  If you can say yes, then stay tuned for Part 2, when I give the specific step-by-step pathways that led to their jobs working in film for several different painters, including this one.  If you still want in, maybe one of those stories will help you on your own job quest.   I hope so.  If that’s what you really want…

Hey, what about acting?