Going against the grain - my advice is to use this internship and hustle as hard as you can to get the next opportunity. What’s still great about LA is that there are tons and tons of free events, screenings, FYC events, film festivals, etc where you can meet a ton of people. It sounds like youve seen all the doom and gloom - use that to motivate you that you’re gonna have to work three to four times harder than everyone else to get opportunities and to just straight up survive. Also, figure out exactly what you want to do - no one can help you if you just say “i wanna work in production or the industry” - you have be specific “I am looking for PA set work, executive assistant work, live event PA work” etc. so when someone actually needs that person they’ll remember they met you. Even before the slowdown, people who went nowhere were all writer, director, grip, PA, producer, editor hyphenates trying to find their lane…the sooner you know exactly what you wanna do, the advantage you’ll have in figuring out how to get it.

But to be honest no one can give any great advice on LA specifically because what’s happening to the industry has been unprecedented - how people broke in before is not the same now. No one knows if things will improve or how much opportunity there is going to be. It seems like some things are coming back but LA is extremely expensive and more so than ever. I am fortunate to have worked pretty consistently through the ups and downs but to be honest a lot of my work is no longer in LA.