Director of Photography -, on location in Los Angeles

Job Position(s): Director of Photography -, on location in Los Angeles

 

Lead video production at Pickup Music

About Pickup Music

Pickup Music is a leading music-education company based in Los Angeles that has been growing steadily since 2016. We are the leaders in structured, long form learning with over 30,000 members for guitar, bass and soon piano.

Description

Job title: Director of Photography – Full-time, on location in Los Angeles

Application closes: Sunday, November 16

Planned start date: Early January, 2026.

Salary: $80,000 – $100,000

I’m Sam Blakelock, co-founder at Pickup Music and I’ll be hiring for this role.

Pickup Music is a music education streaming platform based in Los Angeles. We film all of our content in-house for our 30,000 members.

This is a new role to lead video production at Pickup Music as we scale into new instruments.

About the job

You’re the right person for the job if you fit the following three requirements:

1. You are highly technical and skilled at video production. You have been a DP on medium scale sets, have standardized production pipelines, have mastered video & lighting and set design, and have experience in audio and working with talent.
2. You are comfortable working in small teams. We have small teams and lighter DSLR equipment at Pickup Music by design. This is not a commercial or tv/film set. You enjoy the creative challenge of optimizing quality while maximizing quantity of content.
3. You want to work in-house at a growing education technical company. You want to move away from long days on set or corporate gigs. You want a Monday-Friday career role with normal working hours.

About us

Pickup Music is a leading music-education company based in Los Angeles that has been growing steadily since 2016. We are the leaders in structured, long form learning with over 30,000 members for guitar, bass and soon piano. We are an independent, bootstrapped company led by musicians.

Where is it based?

This is a full time role based in Los Angeles. The hours are normal working hours – Monday to Friday. You’ll be in the studio on set close to 100% of the time – this a fully in-person role. The studio is currently in North East LA and we may be getting a new production space that you’ll work in as well.

What’s the pay?

This role pays $80,000 – $100,000 / year depending on your experience. We offer a 401K 4% match, healthcare, 20 days paid leave, sick leave, and parental leave.

What’s the work look like?

Here’s the work you’ll do in your first few months:

• Learn how we do video at pickup and improve it. We have 10 years experience in video and are the leader in music education at video. But we’ve more or less learned as we went, so you’ll help us professionalize and level what we do.
• Design and build sets: You will help us design a new production space including leading on the set design and build out with our Head of Production.
• Be on set running video and audio. 90% of this job is on set running video and audio. You’ll run audio and video! We can train you on audio if needed. A couple of times a month we do larger teams for our band session videos or Youtube videos where you’ll DP.

Day to day, you’ll be working closely under our Head of Production, with our video editors and post-production team, and managing contractors for off-site productions and one-off projects.

Our approach to content at Pickup is highly iterative. Every new class we produce we review and find ways to improve. You’ll quickly build a body up a body of work, see how it helps people learn music, and be a part of a team that is continually improving.

Not in the US? Unfortunately this job is only available for people legally able to work in the US. We are not sponsoring visas for this role, and it is not a remote job.

How to apply

This application has three parts:

1. Cover letter. I encourage you to write specifically about why you would like this role and your vision for video production at Pickup Music and how we can get there. Keep it short and sharp and say what matters most to you. We don’t use AI to look at our applications and will prioritize applications written by humans. Writing is an important part of every role at Pickup Music because we have a distributed team so take your time with this.

2. A curated portfolio of relevant work that you have led on. Share work that you have led photography on. Please include notes on who the client was, the team size and your role in the project.

3. CV. Share your work experience.

The interview process will follow these steps:

• We are posting this job from Thursday October 23, 2025 and closing off applications Sunday, November 16 at 11:59pm PDT.
• If you get selected for an interview, there will be three interviews and one paid assignment. You’ll pass each step sequentially, and we will email you about each one if you progress to the next stage:
• Interview 1. 25 min call with me to ask me any questions and for me to get to know you.
• Interview 2. A second longer interview.
• Paid project for 1 day – let us know your day rate and we’ll pay you that amount. We’ll work together on set.
• Final interview
• Job offer and reference checks. I’ll call three of your references who have directly managed you, then give you the formal offer.
• We aim to make an offer by the end of November 2025 with a start date in early January, 2026.

We know this is a lot of work so we appreciate the time you’ve taken to consider this role. We look at every application and consider everyone who applies.

Salary

$80,000 – $100,000 per year