The Movies
Film work tends to be done by experienced pilots with whom directors, and particularly cameramen, are comfortable with. It is not impossible for the "local guys" to do it if they are unavailable, but there is a big difference between just circling a target and chasing a car backwards down a ravine— experienced pilots should also have the maturity to keep out of danger by not pushing the machine past its limits, or not get too concerned when all the plans go awry.
You will mostly come in contact with the production department, who are responsible for the correct scheduling and availability of equipment, including the helicopter, which gives you approximately the same status as a typewriter, or sometimes less. You could be on standby all day, and not fly at all, or be told the evening before you will be taking off very early. In short, there will be a lot of jerking around, which should not be taken personally. Ever since an episode in The Twilight Zone, where some people got killed in an accident involving a helicopter on the set, everyone is paranoid about making mistakes and being blamed for them. Very often, the pilot is the only one without an alibi, so that is where the blame will end up. It's all part of the job, and making movies is a very high pressure business.

Cameras are fitted in various ways, typically sidewards-facing, but the Spacecam is a gyro-stabilised affair that lives in a large round casing on the front of an AStar:

(OK, so it's a Twinstar – it fits both) The electronics are so good that you can take a fair amount of turbulence without the camera even seeing it.
The flying itself includes a little formation work here and there, some precision hovering, or cross-controlling when you have to make sharp, level turns. You need to be smooth on the controls, operate safely and ensure there is plenty of communication, but most important is knowing the performance limits of your machine.
Directions, when given, are in relation to the camera, as in "Camera Right" or "Camera Left". Otherwise, if you don't have an aviation liaison person, you can expect all kinds.

Aerial Survey
This is the process of photographing areas of land from varying heights, the results generally used for map-making. As a result, this takes place at great heights, but it may get exciting and bring you down to 300 feet, depending on the results required. Aerial survey can give good job satisfaction, especially when you can see the results, and the target appears in every frame as requested by the surveyor.
When doing low-level work, you will be given a large-scale map with flight patterns marked on it, and you do everything by pure map reading. The pattern can be star-shaped, with sets of two or three parallel runs at angles to each other over the target. The equipment used is something like the Zeiss trilens, which will take one flat and two oblique photographs at the same time. You can work at higher levels with a 35mm, but you will need a navigation aid, like Decca Navigator, or GPS, as close map-reading is not so easy up there.