Ryan Schlyer

Background

About Ryan Schlyer

One of my most notable experiences was as a production assistant on a movie set. My main responsibility was keeping track of the radios that each member of the crew used and keep them accountable for them and let me know when and where they might have lost it. This was vital to the production because we were an independent film with a very limited budget, so having money go towards hair and makeup, wardrobe, locations, and other aspects of production helped us make the sets and costumes look better. It cost $800 to replace a misplaced radio, and before I got on set there were 20 missing radios. I tracked down all but 7 of the missing radios which saved the production $10,400. I also got food for the directors, played background characters, locked down the set so that nobody would accidentally walk in the middle of the scene being shot, and helping move equipment and set up areas other departments needed to use. The values that I found to be the most important when working this job was assertiveness, time-management, and communication. Being assertive was the most important value to have when you were locking up the set, especially outside when there were no doors or barriers that kept people from accidentally walking in or talking during the scene being shot. Being able to stand my ground against people that said they needed to be on set when they were supposed to wait was crucial to making sure that we got what needed to be filmed complete by days end. It was also hard to be assertive because I was one of the youngest and smallest people on set, so I had to stay strong in knowing my role in protecting the set and not let people interrupt the shots. Another important value I needed to exhibit was time-management since I was needed everywhere at one time. This was especially true when I was playing background characters, because I was still working as a production assistant, so I would help move other background characters around, making sure people were quiet when were about to shoot, and get water for other crew members since it was over one hundred degrees every day. Communication was probably the most important skill I learned on the job. If radio communication was unclear or took too long, it would take longer to get to the next scene to shoot. The time between scenes was very crucial since we shot at night, so the more time we wasted, the less "moonlight" we would have, as we would say on set. On top of that, we would only be at certain locations for certain amounts of time, so effective communication made each shoot go by in a timely manner.