Through a different lens

Over the summer I interned in Los Angeles at Panavision, a company that provides cameras and camera equipment for films and television in Hollywood. I was told that Panavision was the place to go in order to learn more about cinematography and network with other people in this field.



My job was to find camera parts, sorting through the massive warehouse. In my first week alone, I helped shipped battery packs for Iron Man 2 (I accidentally got a slight shock from the battery pack, but that's another story).

Director of photography positions are notorious for having very few women in the field. Often, this has been cited due to the fact that DPs are required to do heavy lifting. Also, the technical aspect of camera work tends to deter women who might feel like they have to prove their knowledge of cameras in order to gain acceptance from the cinematography community.

A trailer from the movie Women Behind the Camera interviews a subject who has hesitations about women becoming "camera men."



My experience at Panavision definitely incorporated aspects of this. Although I was not the only girl (there were a surprising number of girl interns that summer), Panavision certainly had its fair share of guys. However, one really memorable thing about working at Panavision was, despite being around heavy equipment, there were relatively few times where the men offered to carry items for me.

Although part of this was due to the fact that everyone was usually too busy to babysit me, for the most part everyone assumed I could lift items when necessary, and that I would come to them if I needed help moving anything. In comparison to experiences in my film classes, there were (and still are) many times when guys offered to carry equipment bulky equipment for me, even though I did not need the help. At Panavision, I got to prove that I could indeed handle the equipment. I may have needed more time or more dollies to move equipment, but I could lift just about any piece of equipment that the other guys moved (the key to moving heavy objects is not brute force, but leverage that doesn't take as much strength).

Over the course of the two months I interned at Panavision I grew accustomed to the "heavier" side of film production, and got to learn about the cameras that made movies like Jaws. My last day at Panavision, I even got to practice panning and tilting one of the models, a skill that my supervisor said I picked up remarkably fast. By the end of my summer at Panavision, I gained a sense that I could accomplish anything in film making, and now am less anxious about working in the production side of this industry.