A Realistic Guide to Becoming a Filmmaker in 2024

Over the last few months of doing one-on-one calls, one thing I've noticed that so many early career filmmakers all seem to have in common is this feeling of career overwhelm. That feeling of having so many options and so many things to invest in, they just don't know where to get started. And with the insane amount of content coming out every day and all the voices competing for your attention, I get it. It is overwhelming. And over the last decade of working in the industry, I've seen literally hundreds of new filmmakers try to launch their careers. And just to be straight up, I see most of them fizzle out within a year or two. With that said, there are others who seem to defy these odds and break through all the noise, but what separates them from all the rest? That's what this video is all about because the truth is it's pretty simple to succeed as a filmmaker, even in a saturated market. But simple definitely isn't the same as easy, so let's break it down. All right, so I don't want to pretend that growing a filmmaking career is as easy as watching a YouTube video because as much as I like to think I share high value knowledge on this channel, the only thing that will actually get you anywhere is focus, drive, and a ton of action over a long period of time. Anyone who says differently is lying to you. But at the same time, I've seen dozens of young filmmakers break through and then go on to have real careers in the industry like working on legit productions and getting paid professional rates and making a full-time living with their cameras. And I'm always conscious of how they're growing because once they get really busy, it means that I need to find new ACs, which is a giant pain in the ass. So Dwee, Rich, Eric, if you guys are watching, I'm happy for you, but it sucked replacing you, so stop getting so much work. I mean, I didn't go to film school myself, and yet I've made 100% of my income from shooting photo and video for more than 10 years now, and it really is as simple as three basic steps. So in this video, I'm going to go through the process that I'd follow if I was starting again in 2024. And by the end, I hope you'll see that it's not really about owning a red or being born as some sort of creative genius. It's just about understanding a simple process, making a plan, and sticking to it over the long term. So right off the bat, the first step in building up a filmmaking career is the most important in the sense that without putting in the time here, everything else you try to do is going to be much, much harder. Right now, I have two people in a long-term mentorship program, and before you get mad, this isn't a plug because the program is totally full, but by looking at their journeys in the filmmaking world, I can see a lot of universal truths that are pretty relevant to almost everybody else too. And when I take on a new student, before we get into any project reviews or networking tips or gear buying, we spend most of the time planning. By planning, I mean identifying what that person's individual filmmaking goals are, because if you don't know what you want, it's going to be way harder to get it. And when I say identifying goals, I don't mean something general like, I want to make money as a filmmaker, because that doesn't really mean anything, and it's almost impossible to plan for. Within the filmmaking world, there are a ton of different sectors and niches, and they're each going to need a different approach. I mean, the core strategies for succeeding as a creative are going to be kind of similar across all fields, but what exactly do you mean when you say filmmaker? Because these days, the word has almost lost all meaning on the internet. Like, are you trying to direct big Hollywood films or get public funding for indie projects? You want to be a cinematographer on high-end commercials or maybe a camera operator for the NBA? Maybe you're interested in verite documentaries like I am. There are literally hundreds of combinations of different jobs and niches that can support you. From there, there's even more variables to consider like, would you be happiest as a one-man-band production company owner or do you want to work on big traveling crews where everyone has a very specific job to do? When you say filmmaker, are you looking to direct or are you down to work as, I don't know, a gaffer or a grip or a sound recordist or field producer? There are so many different ways to make a living in film that without getting specific, it's kind of hard to Like, if I use the example of one of my mentees right now who I'll just call Chris to keep things private, we've spent so much time talking over his goals and where he wanted to be in a few years time. So eventually we narrowed it down based on things like where he lived and what kinds of shows were being made in the region and what his natural interests were until eventually we figured out our goal was going to be to get him into the non-fiction series television world. And to get more specific, because of his interests, we're going to work towards getting his foot in the camera operator and eventually a DP on those shows because shooting is his favorite part of the process. With that starting point, the rest of the plan got a lot more clear and just became more about logistics than vague dreams. And we could think about things like what skills he needed to practice, the types of companies he needed to approach, and the types of people he should try and network with. For the stuff he was most excited working on, which he said were shows like Alone or The Deadliest Catch or The Amazing Race, things like that, he needs to know how to fly a drone, cover fast-moving action scenes, get comfortable with time lapses and action cam setups, do solid interview setup frames, handle run-and-gun sound, just to name a few key skills. Now let's just say we change some of those variables, then our planning would be totally different. So like maybe he lived in LA and he said his goals were to get into high-end commercial cinematography. Most of those key skills that I just said to focus on would change. Commercials are way less likely to shoot with Sonys, you probably don't need to run your own sound, and drones would be way less important. Instead, you'd want to focus on advanced lighting skills and understanding light meters and false color and blocking with actors and high-end color grading, just to name a few. Yeah, they're both technically the same job and it is good to know all of those things across both sectors in the long term, but as you're just working your way up the ladder, the skills, gear, and people you want to focus on are pretty different. So before you can really make meaningful progress, you do need to know what you're aiming for because everything else is going to be downstream of that. If you want to go deeper into this kind of long-term planning, you can download a free filmmaking career guide planner that I made in the description, but the more you understand what you want to do, the more you'll know where to focus your energy. Okay, so once you have a clear idea of what you want to do, you're going to have to prove to people in that part of the industry that you can actually do the job. But what does that mean? Whether or not it's fair, almost no one out there is going to hire you for work that you've never done before. It's sort of like a chicken and the egg situation because most of the time you won't be able to get work unless you've already proven you can do that work. But then how do you prove you can do it if you can't get hired in the first place? The answer is more often than not spec projects. And unless your plan is to like join the union and work your way up the ladder from the very bottom to the top over decades, to build up a long-term career most people are going to have to shoot a lot of spec work. If you don't know what I'm talking about, a spec project just means something that you made without being asked. But you could also call it a personal project and it just basically means the same thing. If you go back to my student Chris's example, that's going to mean building up a solid portfolio of short finished pieces that are roughly in line with the types of shows he wants to work on. So things like short docs, stories about real people, and with a focus on remote or outdoor environments. And that's exactly what he's doing. The first one we worked on together was about a solo motorcycle trip and the one he's on right now is about a wilderness conservation group. Now these are very much in line with the work he wants and they're going to help him demonstrate to a whoever that he has the technical and storytelling skills they need for their shows and that's going to give them the confidence to take a chance and hire him. If he spent all his time making spec ads for Nike or a bunch of music videos, those pieces aren't going to help nearly as much no matter how good a job he does because it's just not that relevant to the people he wants to work for. Because the truth is that if you give him the choice, most people would prefer to hire a specialist in the type of project they're crewing up for rather than a generalist who does a bit of everything. Like if I needed a second shooter for an international doc shoot for example, I'd way rather hire someone who's done a bunch of similar projects instead of an even more experienced person from the narrative world because the pace and workflows are just so different. Like even if someone had shot on a bunch of, I don't know, Marvel movies and had huge credits behind their name, I'd be a little bit nervous about how they'd hold up in a difficult environment without the craft services truck and the dedicated focus puller and a whole bunch of grips nearby to help. And vice versa, I've had narrative DPs refuse to hire me as a second AC because I don't have a ton of on-set experience, even though I have a bunch of high-end Netflix and National Geographic credits under my belt. You can wish it was different and get mad like I did, but in my experience that's sort of the way it goes. But assuming you aren't planning to go into the union as a trainee and you're not planning to spend your whole career there, for me the sweet spot with early career spec projects is somewhere between three and six finished pieces that you can put on a website somewhere. And ideally all of them are going to be in line with the sector of the industry you want to work in. There's no point in showing a diversity of skills here because people just won't see themselves in that work if it makes sense. Like the director of Alone doesn't care about high-end weddings that you've shot, so don't share them if that's the type of work you want. This stage is all about presenting the future professional version of yourself to the people who have the power to hire you, and it's much better to share less but more targeted work than post 15 samples that are all over the place. If I were starting again in 2024 I'd work as hard as I could to get these three to six pieces done as quickly as possible because they're going to be the foundation of your professional presence. As you go, take the very best shots from these projects and put them into a one to two minute reel using only the best of the best. And honestly I wouldn't really start to expect or any much until you've put in this work, as annoying as that might sound. Like if you put yourself in the position of a production manager in charge of hiring a crew, would you hire someone who didn't have relevant work that's in line with your current shoot? You've never met this person, you're under a bunch of pressure to hire the right person and deliver an amazing result, so would you take that chance? I probably wouldn't unless I had no other choice, and even if you have all the potential and talent in the world, I think it's wishful thinking to expect otherwise. Personally I shot about 10 spec photo projects before I got my first paid assignment as a photo journalist, and I lost money on all of those. But when I did get that first nibble of interest from a client, I could point them to those projects and then say confidently, yes I'm the right person for the job. The same thing happened when I moved into video. I made a whole series of docs that I couldn't sell, because honestly looking back they just weren't very good. But when I did get my first lucky break, I could show that producer what I'd made on my own, which then gave them the confidence to hire me for that first job. Prove you can do it, and the work will follow. And the most reliable way to make that happen is to do it yourself. If you aren't willing to do that, then this probably isn't the career for you. Harsh, but in my experience, also true. Alright, so now you have a plan, a goal, and a portfolio. It might take you years to get to this point, or you might do it in six crazy months of effort like my former student Dwee did, but you aren't going to get very far until you get to this point. But once you're there, then it's time for the next phase of the plan, because the best website in real aren't worth anything if the right people aren't seeing it. And the reality is that it's very unlikely that anyone with hiring power is going to spontaneously stumble on your website or Vimeo through a Google search and then try to hire you. It could happen, but I wouldn't count on it, and so you need to create your own luck and get yourself in front of the people who matter. You can call it networking, you can call it self-promotion, or whatever else you want, but it all means the same thing. Figure out who's making what you want to work on, and then find a way to meet them. This is both very simple and really hard, because the easiest approaches to this are also the least likely to work. You might hope that you'll land a big gig by sending one email to the head of production at Netflix, or by DMing Matt Heineman on Instagram, but I'm sorry, that's almost definitely not going to work. If it's easy for you to do, it's also easy for everyone else to do, which means that everyone else is doing it too. Instead, you have to be strategic and really make effort to engineer a relationship, and that's going to take a lot more work than sending a DM. For me, it meant taking one to two networking trips to New York every year on my own dime and getting in front of as many editors and production managers as I could. Before I left, I'd make a huge list of everyone I could think of working in the doc niche, and then I'd try to set up meetings. I'd say something like, hey, I'm a documentary cinematographer, I loved your last project, and I think it'd be a good fit for what you're making in the future. I'm coming to New York for some meetings, and I'll be in town on the following dates. If you have 15 minutes for me to come and introduce myself, I'd love to come by your office with a coffee at any time that's most convenient. I'd make it as easy as possible for them to say yes, and even then, I'd probably only get a 10% response rate. But I kept doing it, and gradually, I got more and more meetings with more and more important people, and over a long enough timeline, a small percentage of those contacts came back to me in the form of gigs. Now, compare that to what most people do, which is send an email or, worse, a DM asking for job advice and then wondering why it's not working. Now, sure, to some extent, it's a numbers game, but it's also about putting in the effort to do what others aren't doing, and that means, again, that the easiest approach is the one least likely to work. But if you put in the time to identify the right people and build up a body of work that speaks to what they're making and then network professionally, i.e. make it easy for those people to say yes, that's when you'll start to see results. I also have a free networking guide that goes deeper into how I approach setting up these meetings, and you can also grab that in the description if you want. It's totally free. So yes, building a realistic filmmaking career really is as simple as those three steps, but that is obviously not the same as easy, not by a long shot. But in the 10 plus years of doing this, I've never met anyone who's put in the effort to identify their goals, build up a body of work, and then networks intelligently who hasn't gone on to have a career. This is not a low effort approach, and it's not for the half committed. It takes time, financial investment, and an incredible amount of work, but if you're really committed to building up a filmmaking career, it's the only system that reliably works. So stop worrying about whether or not you have the right camera, or how fast your editing laptop is, or what LUT packs you own, because the only thing that makes a difference is action. Make a plan, make work, and then get that work in front of the right people, and in time, you'll see results. Anyone who says you can do it easier than that is lying. So just get started. See ya.