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advice on SOC and local 600


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Hi everyone! Sorry if this is covered elsewhere. I searched the boards and didn't see this covered. I'm a local AC in the bay area and have been the 1st or 2nd on 5 different features (mostly ultra low budget indies) over the past 2 years. I'm interested in being a career AC and was looking for any advice on joining the SOC or local 600. What counts as a day toward my 100 and what should i be doing to prove I've worked those days? I have close to 100 days now should I be submitting them to someone? What do you have to do to become a member in the SOC? Is it similar to the union? Is it helpful for AC's to be on their roster?

 

thanks and sorry if this is all covered somewhere else.

 

Jerome

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The SOC is the Society of Operating Cameramen, so unless you're working regularly as an operator, and have someone to propose you, it will be impossible and pointless to join.

 

Local 600 is the camera union. Any paid day in your current classification counts. You need to submit proof to Contract Services, in the form of call sheets, check stubs, producer letters etc. All this information is freely available on the 600 website.

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Hi guys thank for the replies. I knew the SOC was mainly for operators but I've heard a few other AC's mention they were a part of it. I guess I was just wondering if it was something worth pursuing.

 

Regardless I found another thread similar to this that I somehow missed earlier. I'll just take my questions there.

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Idle query.

 

I'm looking in on this situation as an outsider, but I'd be interested to know if there's any sensitivity to what "any paid day in your current classification" means.

 

I mean, I've paid people to fill a role loosely described as "camera assistant", and they were very useful, and I was very happy, but I can't realistically claim it was particularly good training toward working on the next Transformers.

 

Obviously this is a much rarer situation in the US, where there's proportionally far fewer outfits at that uneasy point of being serious enough to pay but not quite serious enough to be real productions, and things tend to be done a lot better, but it must happen.

 

P

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If you have a paycheck from a payroll company that lists you as a camera assistant, there isn't much further questioning from Contract Services about how good an assistant you were or how hard or advanced the work was, etc. Where they do question people more is when the documentation isn't from a payroll company, like just providing a letter from a producer that says "Bob was a camera assistant on July 9 through 14" etc. They've sometimes not given equal value to such letters compared to payroll information or a paycheck that says "camera assistant" somewhere on it, etc.

 

Getting on the union roster is only one step towards getting a union job, hiring is still based on a resume, references, and/or a job interview generally so there are further hurdles to getting that job on "Transformers"...

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