ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

2 years, 2 months ago - Vasco de Sousa

Hi Amber,
Getting a job in film is a bit like getting a job as an engineer, a plumber or a math teacher. I know people in different industries, and their stories are so similar.
Do you have a CV, a cover letter, a portfolio that you are sharing? Have you had friends, family, your instructors, look over that? (Perhaps they know some skills you are leaving out).
Here are some skills that you might be forgetting about.
Do you speak Welsh? (You don't have to be native, but if you can have a telephone conversation in Welsh that is a huge plus. Welsh producers like speaking their own language).
Do you have a drivers license? (I don't, which was a major inhibitor to a lot of jobs).
Will you consider being an editor? (There are more paid editor jobs that are easy to get).
Be around professionals. I had a hotdesk in the same building as a small production company, and was hired for small jobs by him. (Probably could have gotten an editor job with them if I really wanted it, but I didn't apply or even show interest).
Also, ask people how they got their first jobs (not just in the film industry, business is business). When you ask them for advice, they will tell you what they want you to do. If you ask them about their experiences, it will help you come up with your own creative solutions.
Do this at film festivals, face to face. Remember, production jobs are face to face, they are not always easy to find online. (Great jobs to find online include work from home telesales, computer programmer, online English teacher, etc.)

Hope it works well for you.
Vasco

2 years, 2 months ago - John Lubran

Hello Amber

You've just graduated from Falmouth uni and trained as a director. I'm presuming that the films you've directed were a part of your course.

Starting at the top isn't as preposterous as rote learners might assert.

Whatever well qualified advice may be offered, other people's experience and wisdom ought not be assumed to be a generality.

Whilst having the training to understand the technical nuts and bolts of film making is important, even if not actually essential, there's more than a few pathways to aspirational success.

Most limitations and obstructions have more to do with undeveloped natural nouse and lack of fortune than the lack of production skills, which get less costly and less technically demanding every few months.

The more culturally and consciously aware one gets, the luckier one also gets.

The Cardiff production scene does have a significant Welsh language sector, which might be big in Wales but which is still tiny in terms of the big wide world.

Welsh language has significantly boosted the film and television industry in Wales because of the massive subsidies invested in Welsh language media since the 1980's. S4C for example is the most luxuriantly subsidised television company in the world. Ironically it's this money that has springboarded the Welsh English language sector, which is much bigger in Wales than the Welsh language sector. The Welsh language sector might provide a nice niche bubble for Welsh speakers, a bubble that can be an unintentionally limiting cul de sac; but the fact that there are less than 300,000 fluent Welsh speakers (a number that appears to have peaked) in a population of over three million in Wales, is a manifest reality. The old adage "If one can walk and speak Welsh at the same time, one can get a job in Welsh television, is more than rhetorical. Other than tokenism, there's no Welsh language film sector of even small consequence, even within Wales.

Editing other people's work is far and away the best production education because it not only teaches the multitasking skills that make one more valuable, but also teaches one what was good or bad about everyone else's work, including that of the Producer, Director and camera department. Most of the viable filmmakers, directors and photographers that I've worked with were also editors first.

Finding the right team to work with will make the difference. Starting at the top is an attitude and cultural asset as much as it's a skillset.

It's a not insignificant fact that many successful film makers began without formal production training. Schools and colleges rarely teach 'out of the box' thinking. Or as otherwise referenced, the interconnectedness of filmmaking with the rest of the socsiocultural, sociopolitical and socioeconomic World.

That great filmmakers are more born than taught isn't a preposterous notion either.

A not unreasonable pathway is to find a small dynamic outfit who aren't culturally painted into any corners but who are making films that are aspirationally authentic and not 'painted by numbers'.

Other realities are available.

2 years, 2 months ago - Mark Wiggins

Hi Amber

Subscribe to www.myfirstjobinfilm.com

Here Runner jobs are advertised.

Also, start helping out on Short Films to build up experience of being on set; build up your CV. You will also meet people that can help you. A 1st AD on a short film might work as a 3rd AD or even a 2nd AD on paid jobs.

It’s about who you know as it’s people who hire people.

And Network like crazy.

Hope this helps.

Mark

2 years, 1 month ago - John Lubran

It can also be an obstruction when beginners are too narrowly focused on fiction drama as a preferred aspiration. Opportunities to become viably successful movie producers and directors, in terms of financial sustainability, are thinner than winning the lottery.

Fiction drama is the epitome of paint by numbers process. Tight scripts and storyboards are central to the costly business models, which in turn provide quite narrow pathways to skills development.

Factual, documentary, commercials and corporate, whether business or socially generated, provide further opportunities for career development with doorways into every other sphere of media, film and television. Working within human networks that extend beyond the realm of fiction drama doesn't diminish the opportunity to make movies, but ironically developes them. Not least because multitasking skills can be acquired faster and more easily than has been the case up until the digital revolution finally overtook analogue, for practical, creative and qualitative purposes.

We're immersed in such a vast world of film and TV that anyone with an authentic interest in how to make films, of any kind, is able to discern what works and what doesn't without leaving their armchairs.

The breadth and depth of the business of the business is evolving rapidly. Jobs in the big corporations are mostly locked into tiers at the lower levels of those pyramids. Places at the top are structurally limited.

Nevertheless for youngsters starting out, time spent within those corporate pyramids can be beneficial even if not statistically rewarding.

The rewards stemming from the creative skills of filmmakers are limited by the creative skills of their business models.

As always, other realities are available.