so a media production company reached out to me after seeing some of my footage on instagram and they want to bring me on as basically their dedicated aerial guy. its a salaried position which honestly i never thought would be a thing in this industry, at least not for someone at my level. the pay is decent, not amazing, but its steady and they said theyd cover my equipment insurance which is huge.

the thing is ive been freelancing for three years and i have clients i really like working with and i kind of love the flexibility even though yeah some months are stressful. the production company does a lot of commercial work and some documentary stuff which sounds genuinely interesting but im worried ill get pigeon holed into doing the same types of shots over and over.

anyone made this kind of switch either direction? i feel like i should be more excited about this than i am and im trying to figure out if thats a red flag about the offer or just me being weird about change

I did the opposite — left an in-house gig at a surveying company to go freelance about four years ago and haven't looked back, but I'll say this: the stability of that salary was genuinely nice especially in winter when freelance work basically dies. if the company is doing documentary work that's actually pretty cool variety, not like shooting the same parking lot for amazon every week. I'd push them on creative input before you decide, like whether you'd have any say in how shots are planned or if you're just executing someone else's storyboard the whole time. that was the thing that killed it for me personally.

equipment insurance covered by the employer is not a small thing, that stuff adds up fast. id probably take the job honestly but i might also be biased because freelancing stresses me out lol. the unpredictability of it is just not for everyone and theres no shame in wanting a paycheck you can count on