Assistant engineers: who needs 'em?

[soundguy]

when faced with a situation like that I usually explain to the person trying to hire me exactly what areas will suffer by understaffing a job and make it explicitly clear that I wont pull up the slack for those suffering areas if it means compromising the integrity of what I am hired to do. I then tell them they can a)hire me and hire an assistant, b)hire me and dont hire an assistant and dont complain when xy and z I outlined doesnt happen, c)hire a politican "yes" man who will tell you everything will be copacetic and you wont find out until the job is over that you actually got choice b. This is a *really* common thing on low budget movies and generally when you are honest and explain to producers whats not going to happen they are typically cool with it. Those jobs are *tough* so its really not much of a loss if you dont get the gig, sometimes sitting home playing video games is a better use of your time than totally fucking up some idiots job and your reputation because they were too cheap to take your reccomendation on appropriate staff required to do what they are asking. dont sweat the small stuff.

dave

[dokushoka]

You could always find someone to intern under you, personally, and work out your own deal with them.

[cdbabel]

I just have to get the forum's opinions on this one from the perspective of what happened to me today. I do work in studios in NYC, and there are some where I've been on staff as either an intern, assistant engineer, or engineer. Currently I'm a staff engineer and have been for years at this particular spot, and I've been "put" on a multiple-day tracking session. First day comes and goes, great. Second day, the studio manager tells me there will be no assistant on the session and I will have to simply deal with it. Now, if I had no assistant on the first day, my stress levels would have been greatly amplified, something I don't think is good unless my job title included the word Masochist. Without getting into too many details at this point, I'm thinking that the manager doesn't seem to think an assistant engineer is integral to a session paying full rate for our services, or I am fully capable of doing two people's jobs at the same time while getting paid for only one. I'll save the meaty bits and say that I refused the job, and based this decision solely on my position in the situation, which could have set a bad precedent for any future repeat situations. What say you, and what questions do you have to clarify your understanding of this before I end up writing a studio psychology compendium?

Dang, I know a ton of audio engineering students who would give their left testicle to intern/assist for an experienced audio engineer, for little or no pay. Real studio and setup experience is hard to come by, even when your paying $40,000 at NYU Tish's Recording Arts program. Plus you get to learn how a pro deals with musicians and approaches a session.

Really, find the nearest recording school and make it known you need an assistant. I expect you'll find many eager to help you out.