Veteran Crew Member? This Is Why Producers Still Need You

I was on a studio shoot for a national deodorant commercial a while back, and we needed someone to get up in the grid to mount some grip equipment. Our veteran grip climbed up into the scissor lift, and as it started to rise, I looked up and asked, "Hey, you good?" He looked down to me and said, "I may be an old-timer, but they're not putting me out to pasture yet." And everybody laughed, including him. But I've been in this industry long enough to know that this is not always a joke, because underneath that comment is something real. Do producers still want me? Am I getting too old for this? Did I miss my chance to build the kind of career and financial stability I should have built years ago? If you've ever felt that, I want you to hear something directly from a producer who's hired thousands of crew members over hundreds of projects. Because in this video, I want to show you why your judgment is worth more than speed, why experience still matters on a production day, and why it's not too late to build the financial stability you your career deserves. Oh, and by the way, if you're just getting started in this crazy business, don't click off. What I'm about to share is the cheat code to help you thrive enough to become a veteran. Part 1: What producers actually need. So let me tell you what producers are looking for, because it's probably not what you think. What producers need is people who can do the job, but more than that, people who lower the risk of the day. Fresh crew can bring great energy, new ideas, new tools, and a different way of seeing the work. And that matters. I'm not here to knock younger crew because every veteran was new once. But experience brings something different. It brings judgment. It brings calm and the ability to look at a normal production and know, "I've seen this before and I know where this is going." That is your superpower, and no budget cut can take that away. And yes, sometimes a newer crew member might have a lower rate, But the cheapest person on paper is not always the cheapest person on set because one missed detail, one slow reset, one bad read of the day, and one problem that should have been caught 2 hours earlier can cost the production far more than the rate difference ever saved. That is why producers still need veteran crew. Part 2, your value is what you prevent. Let me show you what this actually looks like on a real shoot. We were shooting a national Snickers commercial. On the 17th floor of a building. It was a beautiful conference room with wall-to-wall windows and a great view. It was very expensive looking. It was perfect. But once you're shooting in a room surrounded by glass, you're dealing with changing light, reflections, the sun moving, buildings across the street, the list goes on and on. Oh, and whatever the weather decides to do that day. Well, 2 days earlier on the tech scout, the weather looked great for our shoot date. So, it did not seem to be on anyone's radar. On the shoot day, our gaffer looked out those windows and saw clouds moving in the distance. And here's where experience matters. He didn't wait until the light changed, or while we were all standing there wondering why the room no longer matched the approved shot. He suggested we flip the shooting order, shoot the close-ups first where we could control the light, then go back to the wides once the storm has passed. The wides were the most vulnerable. They depended on the room, the windows, the natural light, the view, and of course, whatever was happening outside. But the closeups, they gave us control. We could shape the light, protect the look, and keep shooting instead of bleeding time. He and the key grip had everything they needed just outside the door in the hallway. Once the storm cleared, we went back to the original schedule and shot the wides and finished the day clean. That's not someone who just knows how to light a shot. That is someone who knows how to protect the day. Part 3: You still have to stay visible. But there's another part of this the veteran crew need to hear. Producers cannot hire you if they forget that you're available. And I don't mean to start posting every day or begging for work or becoming some fake network machine. I mean staying connected to the people you already know that already trust you and would probably be super happy to hear from you. Because relationships require maintenance. That is absolutely true in freelance production. A lot of veteran crew have a huge advantage here because they have years of relationships behind them. Producers, production managers, coordinators, uh, DPs, other department heads— people who know they can already trust you. But if you disappear for even a few months, you make it harder for people to keep you in mind. Production moves fast, and people are juggling jobs, budgets, crews, clients, and a hundred other things at once. I'll give you an example of what staying visible actually looks like. A week before I started prep on a Ford Mustang job, I got a call from a first AD. I'd worked with him before, and he was not calling about work. He was calling to ask how my wife Beljicka did at her last ballroom dance competition. We caught up for a few minutes, and somewhere in the conversation, he happened to mention that he had just wrapped a job. A job where they had closed down a street and a few things had gone sideways. Nothing dramatic, just the kind of honest debrief you have with someone you trust. The call lasted maybe 10 minutes, but when it came time to staff the Ford Mustang shoot, he was the first person I thought of. Not because he had the longest resume, but because he was already in my head. We were shooting the commercial in downtown Los Angeles. We closed down the streets and we had police officers controlling the traffic. It was a whole thing. And on a job like that, the permit runs the day. We had to be out before the office workers started coming down from those buildings at 4 PM. Even though the police were technically working for us, they still had their orders. And it did not matter how beautiful the shot was or how badly the client wanted one more take. At 4 PM, the street opened back up and we needed to be taillights. And the commercial we planned was no longer a commercial we were allowed to shoot. Our veteran first AD though understood that from the moment he walked on set at 11 o'clock in the morning, he was already protecting 4 PM. He was watching the shot list, the resets, the picture car. He was watching every time the director was pushing for one more version and always keeping track of the real amount of time we had left. He knew when to say, "We can do that, but it costs us this other shot." He knew how to move the day forward without making anyone feel rushed. Now that's the kind of person a producer calls back. Not because they worked the hardest, but because they made the day feel safe. So part of your job is making it easy for good people to think of you. A simple check-in, a thank you after a job, a quick note when you're available. You are not starting from zero. You may just need to restart the conversations. If you're going to reach out to a producer, a PM, or coordinator today, Drop the word today in the comments. That's it, one word. Consider it your public commitment. Part 4, it is not too late financially. Staying visible gets you hired, but even if you are the first call on every job, irregular income with no system behind it means a great career can still feel financially fragile. And this is where I wanna get personal. Late in my career, I turned down a $17,500 job. The director was someone I had worked with before and it had not gone very well. They were mean to the crew and they were inexperienced in ways that cost us money, and we ended up reshooting things that should have been right the first time. I told myself I would never put myself or my crew through that ever again. So when the call came in, I said no. And it was terrifying because $17,500, it's not nothing. I sat there with that decision for a few days. Wondering if I'd made a mistake. But then something shifted. I realized I'd gotten through it because I had a cushion. I had not even built a financial cushion on purpose. It was just there. And it had given me the one thing I did not know I was missing: the ability to say no to the wrong job. That changed everything for me because I thought about what it would mean to have that feeling on purpose, not accidentally, not just when I got lucky with timing. But all the time. So I opened a high-yield savings account, then a brokerage account, and I started learning how investing actually worked. For most of my career, I'd assumed that investing was basically gambling. And I used to joke that choosing a career in freelance production was already too much of a gamble, and I was not about to gamble my hard-earned money on top of it. But once I understood how it worked, I realized how wrong I had been. I was so excited when I figured this all out that I ran home and I told Belgica, "I need to share this with my industry. I wanna make it a better place." Because here is what I want you to know. The goal was never just to make more money. The goal was to never again have to take a job I did not want because I was afraid of what would happen if I said no. That is what a money system actually buys you. Not luxury, but options. And I'm not saying this from a mountaintop. I'm saying this as someone who found this late, but then built it deliberately and wants to hand it to you before you need it the way I did. The difference between where you are and where you want to be is not time. It's whether you start. That is exactly what the next video is about. I built a 3-part investing system specifically for freelance film crew No finance degree and no steady paycheck required. Just a system that works for the way we actually get paid. Watch it next.