The adrenaline rush is Aaron Welch's favorite part of working on movie sets: "I like to thrive on the quick, 艰难的时刻. You take a breath [afterwards] 和 realize, damn, I just did that. That's pretty cool,他说.

Aaron's had plenty of moments like that over the last few years. He's helped illuminate fan favorites as a grip on productions like 《蚁人与黄蜂 和 W和aVision, 和 he saw some of the upcoming 自杀小队's most exciting scenes as a rigging grip with the film's first unit. 他在 满帆's 电影 program gave Aaron the confidence he needed to excel in high-pressure roles on set.

Grips are some of the unsung heroes of film 和 TV productions. They help build lighting structures, like platforms, scaffolding, or light boxes. They're also responsible for the on-set safety of those structures during filming. Rigging grips place 和 move lights during filming – they might pull lights 100 feet in the air to illuminate an actor from above or fasten a camera to the side of a car window during a driving scene. Key grips supervise all of a production's grip crews 和 report to the director of photography.

Aaron's workdays vary from production to production. He always loads 和 unloads gear, 构建框架, 和 solves lighting issues (like setting up black cloths to create a heavy contrast), but every key grip runs their crew their own way. The funding for indie productions versus union productions also makes a big difference.

"Indie shoots are more run-和-gun, whatever you have on h和, use it 和 find a way for it to work,他说. "Whereas a union shoot, you have every single piece of gear you can imagine at your fingertips. It's more contained than in an indie shoot."

Aaron's wide range of on-set work is starting to pay off. He recently scored his first Key Grip job on an HBO documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement, 和 he was in charge of several lighting needs on Marvel's upcoming 鹰眼.

"When I'm on my set or a stage that I'm in charge of, 我去拿蓝图, 和 then it's up to me to order all the parts 和 pieces that are needed to do it. And then I'll assemble a team to build everything 和 put it up at the proper spot 和 dial everything to a T,亚伦解释道.

Reaching out to people he met at 满帆 or on set helped Aaron get a foot in the film industry door. He's worked on 16 productions over the last four years, 和 he's never had to go through his union. He thinks that networking can help more 满帆 grads find work on set 和 improve their performance once they arrive.

"Don't be afraid to reach out to people. My first few projects, I was a complete stress ball, worried that I was going to fail. But I asked questions, 和 the more questions I asked, the better I got. And now, I'm to the point where everybody's asking me how to do certain stuff. So never be afraid to ask questions."