Interns: Sync Rentals, LA
/TP: So, how would someone go about becoming an intern with Sync?
Adam Weisman: We do that kind of behind the scenes, informally, but it’s still for a regular accreditation. We make sure they have the correct forms, we check in with them, they have special requirements.
T.J. Crume: It has to go through a school. Photo assistants who want to just learn and work for free doesn’t happen anymore.
TP: Of course.
TJC: But [our intern application process] will eventually be on our website and discussed in some of our blog posts.
TP: And what are some of the traits you look for in an intern or in an individual you want to bring on to your company?
TJC: From the Midwest!
AW: He’s not kidding, he likes the work ethic. Work ethic is imperative.
TC: Organized, good customer service, hard working. It’s not that we don’t take people from California, like Adam, but our previous crew hail from Iowa and Michigan.
TP: So as stereotypical as it might be, those Midwestern work-ethics are what you really value.
AW: Because it’s not necessarily knowledge, you’ll learn that on the job. What can’t be taught is the desire to continue to impress when no one is watching. The development cycle. And what’s amazing is that some of those interns have turned into shop workers and from there, we place our assistants on jobs - that is what we do. If you are what we call “synced up” or another term that we love is “syncalicious” - if you’re syncalious, we get you on shoots!
TC: We have a huge success story. One individual and I met at the Palm Springs Photo Festival. He’s a key assistant right now and he’s been traveling the world with a photographer friend of mine. He came into the industry wanting to be an assistant. He was interning [at the Palm Springs Photo Festival], and wanted to intern at our shop. After that, he become a grip room worker, was offered a full-time assistant position in New York, which he actually turned down. He’s currently freelance, really enjoying himself shooting and assisting.
Read Sync's full interview here!
There's a particular kind of confusion that shows up in production offices lately, and it isn't about budgets or call times. It's about a handful of terms — usage rights, likeness rights, digital replicas, AI training, derivative content — that have started appearing in the same paragraph of a contract, often used as though they mean roughly the same thing.
They don't. And the gap between them is quickly becoming one of the more consequential distinctions in commercial production.
This vocabulary comes largely from entertainment law, a world most photographers, stylists, producers, and models were never trained to navigate. It's being absorbed into advertising and commercial contracts faster than most of the industry has had time to build a shared, plain-language understanding of what it actually covers. The result is a lot of very careful people signing very specific language without a clear sense of what they've agreed to.
So it's worth slowing down and taking each term on its own.