How can I get involved in filmmaking?

December 26, 2005 6:39 PM

CareerFilter: I'm a technical person (software developer/researcher) looking for/needing a career change to something creative. I've been thinking about filmmaking.

My career to date has included some work peripherally related to video processing, so I have some experience with things like video compression and even some editing. All of that work has been on the technical side, though, and not really the creative side. I want to change that.

I've always had an interest in video/film production, but have only ever been involved in a few small amateur projects with friends in the past. I'd like to pursue this interest, but am not sure how to go about it. I can't even say for sure which part of the field really interests me most (writing/editing/etc.). I'm still relatively young (mid-twenties) and have no problem with trying lots of things for low pay or even no pay just for experience.

What are some good ways to start to think about this? Intro filmmaking classes? PA work? Just grabbing a camera and playing around for a while? I don't really know any people in this field (most friends and colleagues are technical people, like me) and so any advice/opinions/reality checks would be appreciated.

posted by chos to Work & Money (10 answers total)

Work on your demo reel: a 5-minute video sample of your work. Doesn't have to be Oscar material. Amateur stuff is fine. Be creative.

Learn Avid or preferably Final Cut Pro. Most of filmmaking happens at the editor's desk. You may start as an unpaid assistant to an editor doing thankless tasks like logging footage but the payback is the editor becomes your mentor.

If you want to work with film crews then learn lighting (buy a book, read some web sites) and or sound recording. You can start as an unpaid production assistant but again, you learn.

If you want to try making your own film expect to spend two years on it. Most of that time will be spent editing.
posted by StarForce5 at 7:00 PM on December 26, 2005

Get any job you can in the industry. Surround yourself in an envornment of learning. Take the pay-cut. Do it.
posted by Frasermoo at 7:02 PM on December 26, 2005

If youre a programmer you might find Jitter to be fun. Maybe not careere changing but a really unique and fun tool.
posted by atom128 at 7:30 PM on December 26, 2005

If you're in the LA area you can take actual UCLA film classes during the summer sessions even if you're not an enrolled student. I did this last summer and found the information and the environment invaluable. These are the same professor's who teach their world-class film program.

Especially do the Cinematagraphy course, Screenwriting with Richard Walter, and Experimental Film. Amazing.
posted by jasonlatshaw at 8:16 PM on December 26, 2005

As someone who's had a little bit of success in the creative side of television, I would recommend taking a class in production first to see how you like it before making a career move.
If you do it for a little while on the side and feel passionate about it, then consider the jump.
The entertainment industry is filled with hungry and talented young people who will work long hours for next to nothing.
It's taken me eight years of very hard work to get to a point where I can even pay my bills and not be in serious debt. Sure, now it's great to have a creative gig that I like and be able to buy dinner, but it's been a long hard road, there's no job security, and you're only as good as today's performance.
Bottom line from me is, you've got to follow your dream...just make sure it's what you really want before you stake your livelihood on it.
posted by BillBishop at 10:46 PM on December 26, 2005

I started out with a career in film and lasted about 2 years. It was tough work with a lot of creative people, but there were guys in their late 30's (I was just out of college) who were still trying to break in. It's somewhat easy to get a production job, i.e. someone who is little more than a gofer, but it is really hard to get any career path kinds of positions.

The people who "made" it were definitely more creative and more dedicated than most. If you have talent and can show it, you have a good shot. If you are no more talented than the next really talented guy, I would suggest something else.

Also, network. If you already know someone who can get you some gigs, you are half way there. If not, I would do it as an avocation. All you need is some semi-pro video equipment, a credit card, and lots of friends who are willing to be your talent. Make a great short, shop it around, and get funding to do something bigger.

I wouldn't jump ship into film until you had something to jump into. Also, the work is 2% fantastic and 98%sitting around or running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Lots of down time and lots of poorly used time. It's really a career that you do because you just really wouldn't be doing anything else. Good luck to you. I hope you do better than I!

Side note: I went to film school with the guy who was the director of special effects photography for the Matrix. He was the only one who did his own thing, didn't pay attention to how it was "supposed" to be done, and was willing to take big risks just to see if something "worked". He's the only one from my class that seems to have "made it" and there were a lot of really talented people. He was the last guy I thought would ever make a career in film. I learned a valuable lesson by his success.
posted by qwip at 2:48 AM on December 27, 2005

The Writers Guild of America is the union that all film & TV writers for major studios/networks belong to. According to their statistics, only about 50% of their members have any sort of film or TV work in any given year--and, remember, the sample here is people who have already gotten enough film or TV work in the past to make it into the union in the first place. And among actors, the employment level is even lower.

In my case, I moved out to LA in '95 and started pursuing writing work. It took me until 2000 to get a TV job, which lasted for 3 years until the show was canceled. Then I was unemployed for about a year, and recently, I got my first feature film writing gig, which is something I've been pursuing for about 10 years.

What I'm saying is, if there's some sort of steady, dependable job that you think you'll find as satisfying as film, you should probably pursue that, instead.

On the other hand... If you're starting to suspect that you'll never be truly happy unless you're doing something creative, then you'd be a fool to give up a shot at true happiness, no matter what the financial risks. And if you're going to take career risks, much better to do it now, while you don't have kids or a mortgage.

Oops. Darn it. I have to go. I have more to say about this, but this is a natural ending point, so I'll post this and put up Part II tomorrow. Sorry about that.
posted by yankeefog at 10:18 AM on December 27, 2005 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Wow, thanks for all of the feedback.
posted by chos at 10:44 AM on December 27, 2005

Absolutely grab a camera (and Final Cut for Mac or Adobe Premier for PC) and play around. If you can't have fun with that you may not have the dedication or desire required to get ahead in a very competitive business.

Try editing together a music video from anime, or a comedic montage from a crap film, or whatever else amuses you. Make a short film, write it, get friends to help and edit it. Challenge yourself to write scripts with specific constraints, for example 10 pages about an incident in a zoo (limitations can be useful in providing focus).

Read some film books, maybe about/by your favourite filmmaker(s). Try the guerilla filmmaker's handbook (I haven't read it, but many film-types seem to like it).

Take a look at mandy.com or something similar, volunteer to help on a small production. Talk to everyone, you'll learn a lot, though be weary of geniuses looking for slave labour, slackers playing filmmaker and the media back-slapping ignoramuses. Don't expect much more than sandwiches and coffee for a while.
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:49 PM on December 27, 2005

OK, I'm back.

I see from your profile that you're in the Washington, DC, area. Once you decide that you are really serious about pursuing a career in film, you will pretty much have to move to Los Angeles. Yes, film production goes on all around the world, but the American film business is centered in LA, and your odds of finding film-related work are VASTLY higher there than anywhere else in the English-speaking world. The odds will be against you to begin with--why make them even worse by living somewhere else?

However, I gather you're still trying to figure out if this is the career for you, and it probably doesn't make sense to upend your life if you aren't positive about this. So my suggestion is that you give yourself a deadline: a year from now, you will either move to Los Angeles, or decide not to pursue film. Here's what you do in that year...

First off, you'll need to figure out which aspect of film you want to pursue. LA is full of people who know, with every fiber of their being, that they want to be cinematographers, or writers, or actors, or editors, or what have you. In order to compete with them, you will have to choose a field and pursue it wholeheartedly.

As others have suggested, the best way to find out what you want to do is to try it. Volunteering to fetch coffee on a film set will give you a sense of the process, but ultimately, if you want to know what it's like to be a director, you have to try directing; if you want to know what it's like to be an editor, you must edit a film; etc. As others have suggested, find a bunch of friends (or like-minded aspiring filmmakers) and start making short films. MetaMonkeys suggestions (and all the other suggestions you've gotten here) have been great.

Another starting point is The Movie Business Book, by Jason Squire, which features essays from practitioners of pretty much every job in the movie business, explaining what it is they do.


While you're figuring out what aspect of the industry you want to pursue, you can start preparing yourself for your move to LA, with the following steps:

1. Save every penny you can, while cutting back your expenses as much as possible. I got my first foot-in-the-door position after living in LA on very little money for about 15 months. Imagine that I had gone broke after 14 months and had to move back; I'd have missed my shot. The longer you can afford to pursue your dream, the greater your odds of achieving it. (And once you move to LA, don't get sucked into the superficial you-are-only-worth-as-much-as-your-car mentality that sometimes prevails there. The guy who is spending $200 more per month than you on his car payment is depleting his savings $200 per month faster than you. In the long run, you will outlast him.) Similarly, avoid new debt, and pay off as much of your current debt as you can. (For this reason, I'm not convinced film school is particularly helpful. Not everybody agrees with me, but I don't think film school gives you enough of an advantage to overcome the disadvantage of being tens of thousands of dollars in debt.)

2. Start acquiring useful entry-level skills. Learn how to touch type if you aren't a fast typist; I got my foot-in-the-door job as a writers' assistant because I type blindingly fast. Another friend of mine took a course in Avid editing before moving out to LA, and, while he was never good enough to become a professional editor, he did get a job cutting trailers to support himself and make contacts in LA. (If you saw a video trailer that tempted you into renting Burn, Hollywood, Burn, that may have been his fault.) If your grammar or spelling skills need work, polish them up. You will also want to make sure you have a drivers' license and good driving skills.

3. Start looking for contacts in the film industry now. If your mom went to school with somebody who is the ex-husband of some producer's chiropractor, start working your way up the chain of contacts. Your goal is not to get the producer to give you a job now, because that's not going to happen. However, you can probably get the producer to give you 10 minutes of telephone time to answer your questions about the industry. Follow that up with a polite thank you note, and occasionally contact the producer with an intelligent and polite follow-up question. By the time you move to LA, if you've kept yourself in this person's mind in a positive way, they will no longer think of you as some random guy but as a polite and ambitious young person who they've helped mentor a little. You can then ask them to keep an eye out for entry-level jobs for you. Build as many contacts this way as you can.

5. Once you've figured out which aspect of the film industry you want to pursue, start giving yourself a huge amount of experience in it. Most writers find that they need to somewhere between 1 and 20 crappy scripts before they write their first good one. I assume it's similar for other practitioners. The more experience you get now (and the more crappy product you get out of your system), the farther ahead of the game you will be when you hit LA.

6. Look for job opportunities in your current field in the LA area. If you can get a good job as a software developer in LA, you can move out there with much less sacrifice. Eventually, you might have to give that job up and take an entry-level typing/coffee-fetching/etc job, but changing cities, and then later changing fields, is much less scary (and risky) then changing cities and field simultaneously.

Hope this helps.
posted by yankeefog at 5:42 AM on December 28, 2005 [2 favorites]