Pros
Paid OT, have food and drinks available in the kitchen and will cover ot dinners. Fun projects to work on
Cons
The higher ups have no idea what they want actually, direction keeps changing on a TV schedule. Not uncommon to get contradictory notes or notes that don't work in continuity. As a result even though the shots and actions are fun and have huge potential, very rarely are you producing quality work. Locker room mentality, very immature atmosphere. Dirty jokes are rampant. Would say you're not a "team player" if you don't stay for OT regardless of the fact that it wouldn't even be looked at till end of the next day, or if you had a legitimate reason and had previously informed them you would not be able to stay that night. Schedule is chaos. You would have finished all your work and be prepared to leave but would be asked to stay for up to the next 4 hours. They would tell you so late that often you would miss ot dinners. Quite often what would end up happening was you would be idle for 8 hours during the day at work then be asked to stay super late on OT to work. Also because of the chaotic schedule, the allocation of work is unbalanced. difficult shots may be given to juniors who can't really do them to quality or correctly and seniors are sitting on boring easy shots thus having nothing to do. Together with the unclear and changing direction ends up with quite a few shots with poor construction. Juniors pick up bad habits and break the rigs. There's complaints and the scene needs to be sent back and forth to fix technical aspects later down the pipeline and it's a huge waste of time for many people.
