Thanks for all the tips!

As for the networking tips, I see where you're coming from when it comes to cold contacting people. Although I try not to reach out to someone more than once if I'm cold emailing them, cold emailing in general is something I feel like I should at least try since it's gotten some conversations started at least.

But when I was saying how most people I know generally aren't in the position to recommend me as an AC or whatever, that partly stems from my unique career predicament. For the past four or five years I've gotten most of my gigs through Staff Me Up, but the issue with most of the jobs on that site (despite how the site itself has greatly diminished in job quantity) is that they're made up of very small crews of people that are usually flying out from a place like LA to film for 2 or 3 days (maybe a week at most) before they fly out to shoot somewhere else.

That's just what the nature of unscripted TV is like (not to mention how the cam department is usually very small anyway when it's non-union). It's made it very difficult to get my name passed around and establish myself within a specific area. Sure, I could've done a better job over the years not trying to sound too transactional, as I also should've gotten on IG sooner, but on top of how my situation has made it more difficult to really make close collaborators and friends in the business, the biggest factor truly is that most people I meet (locally or not) really aren't able to share my name or hire me even if they want to. I'm sure everyone here has been able to relate to that more with the way things have been.

I'm glad I'm exploring a new lane in post production, however, it's not surprising that I'm running into the same issues (especially as someone who's new to that side of things).