On the set, some lessons learned
Annie Wilkinson
Set tutor based in Vancouver, British Columbia
Current assignment: tutored Kirsten Prout in “Elektra”
Credits: “Free Willy 3: The Rescue,” “The Pledge,” “The Santa Clause 2,” “Agent Cody Banks”
Rounding up the class: “As well as being a set tutor I have a company. I have 21 other tutors. It is not a full-time job [for the tutors]. It’s quite sporadic. It depends if there are any movies being made in Vancouver at the time and filters down to how many movies have children in them. Some children request their tutor [by name] if they have worked with a certain tutor. If there is no name request, then usually you approach the production manager; sometimes the producers will phone. It is very different with each movie.
“The major part of my work these days is to find work for the people who work for [my company]. Every week I take the movie list from my computer and phone the production offices. You call up and ask them if they have any minors in the show....
“Sometimes my phone rings and somebody will say to me, ‘We didn’t realize our schedule was going to change, we were supposed to only have the minors for one day and now we have them for the whole week so we need someone at 9 in the morning. In that case, they actually let me send somebody.”
Making the grade: “My philosophy is that there is no teacher that can teach all subjects to every child, and even if you have the experience of working with children from 7 years old to 19 years old, you may not actually be, personality-wise, cluing in to every age group’s needs. You have to have a lot of patience to teach a 7-year-old to read. Then on top of it, if a child is in French immersion, which many Canadian children can be -- or if they are from the States and they are taking a high level of Spanish -- you have to make sure that your tutor will be able to cover that as well. On some occasions we have actually team-taught certain children.”
School days: “The children have to be taught for three hours a day on set, but you don’t always know when those hours are going to be. Sometimes on certain days they don’t get three hours and so the next day they have to have extra teaching. Or if you [may], do extra teaching before the production starts.”
The balancing act: “It’s fairly complex. It is important not to have their math teacher there every time [the children] are busy. That’s why reading the script and shooting schedule is an attribute that you need as a set teacher that you don’t need as a classroom teacher. You also have to be production-friendly. You have to know how to fit in with the crew.”
Oddest classrooms: “There was one time when I was down in the countryside [with a production], I was in the chicken barn. They put up tables and chairs and lights and heaters. I had to explain that they would have to move me further away from the chickens because they were so noisy.
“I taught the first week in September last year and the little boy was in grade one, and we were shooting in the graveyard. They put up a little blue pop-up tent because obviously there are no buildings in the graveyard and we wouldn’t have time to get the little boy back to the trailer all the time. It suddenly occurred to me that this child’s concept [of school] was going to be very strange.”
Getting involved: “I was teaching English as a second language for a private company. Then I became quite ill.... I happened to go into [the company’s] offices, determined to go back to work, and the office manager said, ‘Do you think you’d like to work on a movie set? Do you have enough energy?’ I said, ‘I am sure I do. I need to get back to work.’ I got the interview on the following morning on ‘Free Willy 3.’ The mother and the child interviewed me.”
Guild or union: No
Resides in: Vancouver, British Columbia
Age: “I should tell you what I tell the kids: ‘I am as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.’ The thing is, I never tell the children my age. To children, anybody over 18 is old.”
Salary: “I would advise anyone thinking about doing tutoring [in movies] to realize it is a very dependent job. You are dependent on all sorts of circumstances for your income. I work very hard at it. I am agent for other tutors and I make money on that as well. But you have to learn to budget. It can be very lucrative but there are very lean times. You are not going to be retiring in your 40s.”
