Careers in the field

Bill Sullivan

Bill Sullivan

Active member
I need a little brainstorming help. Somehow, I got roped into doing "Career Day" at our local Junior High School. I'm strictly a documentary filmmaker and as I'm preparing for my presentation, it's dawning on me that I don't know much about those in our field who work "real jobs" in the media world.

So, any help I can get on job opportunities for cameramen, editors, etc. would be appreciated. What kind of "salary" to these professions pay and what are the best ways to break into the field. In most cases, are college degrees required?

Also, it would be helpful to get some ideas on related fields as well.

Thanks for your help!

-Bill
 
Hmm, well in the film industry I can tell you college degrees aren't required. I don't care at all, as a producer who hires people on a fairly regular basis for shoots, if someone has a college degree. I only care about their film experience. I'm also extremely unimpressed by film school degrees. Sometimes I think it makes people dumber, not smarter. They have too much book knowledge of the way Gladiator was made or something, they are total idiots when it comes to working on low budgets, so they get major ego problems thinking a cameraman should never have to move a light, or if they're the 1st A.C. they shouldn't have to carry any equipment, etc. I can't really afford those egos from people who are in their 20s, I'm sorry. That's why a lot of times film school graduates are actually looked down upon. I think as long as they didn't JUST graduate it's ok, but recent graduates have bad attitudes much of the time. They are coming from being big-man-on-campus types to being grips on a real shoot and they haven't adjusted their attitudes yet, i.e. they haven't been beaten down by harsh reality ;)
 
JonathanLB said:
I can't really afford those egos from people who are in their 20s, I'm sorry. That's why a lot of times film school graduates are actually looked down upon. I think as long as they didn't JUST graduate it's ok, but recent graduates have bad attitudes much of the time.
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I understand 100% where you are coming from with the ego problems and not knowing how to work but this sparked a question. I have been doing low to no budget films for 2 years or so and want to goto film school to learn more. I plan on be apart of more films until then which is about a year or so. This isn't the most seasoned someone could be but i do understand what it's like to haul things, lots and lots of things and i am completely fine with it and i have just been in a ton of crappy conditions with filming. With that said and still not claiming to know everything about the work. would you say it wouldn't be worth going to film school because i will be looked at as such?
 
the starting salary for all the positions above is zero and can go as high as one's imagination/initiative.
This is not a field people get into for the money. Art is driven by passion. If that is not there, there are many easier ways to pay the bills and this field will be very temporary. If that passion is there, there is not a pwer that can keep you from this field so the sky really is the limit.
We are great at what we love and not very good at things we see as work. This means you can create your own gigs as you go because you will be better at them than anybody else in the market... or at least in the room. ;)
it's a passion thang.
I can tell you my first job in the bisiness paid 3.35 an hour. My second real job paid less than that at 18k a year with 70 hour work weeks. You'll do plenty of due-paying to work your way in the door. Again, because of the passion for the art.
 
Bill Sullivan said:
I need a little brainstorming help. Somehow, I got roped into doing "Career Day" at our local Junior High School. I'm strictly a documentary filmmaker and as I'm preparing for my presentation, it's dawning on me that I don't know much about those in our field who work "real jobs" in the media world.

So, any help I can get on job opportunities for cameramen, editors, etc. would be appreciated. What kind of "salary" to these professions pay and what are the best ways to break into the field. In most cases, are college degrees required?

Also, it would be helpful to get some ideas on related fields as well.

Thanks for your help!

-Bill
Click to expand...

Bill, I'm doing career day at an elementary school next week and plan to have about ten or twelve minutes of prepared material - and an insert sized jib for the kids to interact with.

I plan to talk on the following points:
  • Jobs in the industry. What the key people do from the top down. Studio / production company level, producer, director, DP, make-up and hair, audio technician, gaffer, grip, editor and so on.
  • Stress that, in most positions, the work is highly cyclical in nature. Even top directors might not always be working. Money is made when you're working and, in most positions, not made when you're not. Residuals and backend is perhaps too high-concept for even 5th graders.
  • The nuts and bolts of production. Emphasize that what people usually see as "filmmaking" is really a very small yet visible aspect of the business.
  • Encourage the continued democratization of filmmaking. Mr. Coppola long ago predicted that kids would soon be making movies with their father's little cameras and knock down Hollywood. Go do anything and everything you can to exercise your filmmaking curiosity and build skills if you want a career in TV or film.
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Thanks guys!

The presentation went well. You can imagine with 5th-8th graders, the questions were varied. The cool thing is that I showed a small clip from my latest doc that I put together to help United Cerebral Palsy with a United Way grant. I was pleasantly surprised that there was so much interest from the kids about the subject of disability. It almost served as a mini-test screening because I wouldn't think this age group would be part of my target audience.

Thanks again for the replies!

-Bill
 
Aschu said:
I understand 100% where you are coming from with the ego problems and not knowing how to work but this sparked a question. I have been doing low to no budget films for 2 years or so and want to goto film school to learn more. I plan on be apart of more films until then which is about a year or so. This isn't the most seasoned someone could be but i do understand what it's like to haul things, lots and lots of things and i am completely fine with it and i have just been in a ton of crappy conditions with filming. With that said and still not claiming to know everything about the work. would you say it wouldn't be worth going to film school because i will be looked at as such?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say that's necessarily true, don't get me wrong film school can be really useful and you can learn a ton, but I want to say that film school is, to me, a collection of elements that can be duplicated in the outside world but that isn't always easy to do, and for some people it may be impossible. In other words, film school collects a bunch of people presumably interested in film, hopefully professionally, who have a passion for the medium and it allows them to experiment, grow, and learn together, under the guidance and supervision of (hopefully) industry professionals who have much to teach. That being said, I took a different approach from I think 99% of people I've encountered. Of course, when I started doing some film stuff, playing around with a camcorder and making shorts with friends, I was in high school and just making junky work for fun. In general, though, I gave that up early and went into critical fields, launching a film review site, writing several books on the medium, writing paid freelance articles on film and directors, etc. I studied from a critical perspective.

When I decided I wanted to do film professionally, I went to my second film school and for the second time, I quit. Ultimately I wasn't pleased with the structure or the assumptions being made about my future. It's like if you want to get on a ride at Disneyland, you have to want to be on that ride right? I mean it's planned for you, the track is laid, you can't change that track because it was built that way for a reason. If that track isn't your idea of fun, you don't get on that ride. Film school was like that for me. The teachers assumed that when I got out, I should be thankful to work as a grip on someone's low budget set or a script sup and that $50 a day would be great pay and I should say, "Thank you may I have another?" For the money I was paying, I said no thanks to that, I can learn to be a grip or script supervisor for a lot less than $40,000 a year plus making a thesis film for another $10,000 plus living expenses! So I quit, for that primary reason that if you can't teach me skills valuable enough to make $150/day minimum, very minimum, you certainly can't ask me to pay $40,000 a year, I'm sorry. The skills you're teaching aren't worth any money, then your school isn't either. I instead took a top down approach, because I didn't have the patience to work my way up doing lousy work for 5 years until one day maybe I could make professional work. I appreciate that path is what most people take and there's nothing wrong with it, I just think it's not the only way and I'd think people would be well off looking at all of their options first.

Instead of that path, I decided to make a few of my own projects, surround myself with professionals, and I got professional results. Sure, I started with very little experience as a director, but I learned a lot about how the set works looking down from the top, as the director, at professionals I hired, and saw how things are done properly, rather than learning myself the million ways things are done improperly, which seems to me a waste of a lot of time. On the last series of projects I did, a collection of 14 corporate projects, I was director but it was a small crew of just 4 of us so I had to do lots of grip / gaffer work as well, which was fine, I know how to put together a porta-jib in quick order, I can assemble the dolly we own, I can rig lights, I have a working knowledge at least of lighting and how to light for different situations, i know my cameras and I know my equipment. Could I DP myself or operate myself? No, not really. But I don't care about that, because I can hire pros to do that, as long as I know how to communicate with them. It's a bit of a risky proposition, I realize, because if you start at the bottom and make lousy work for a while, you aren't risking much except for your time, and you give yourself a chance to experiment and make mistakes. In my case I was risking my own money to put together projects I wasn't entirely sure I could handle, but I did them anyway and they turned out very well because I understood the process well enough, at least, to put the right people around me to make things happen.

On my last music video I learned a ton from the UPM I hired, for instance, more than I could have learned working as a PA at someone's production office. Yet I co-own my own production company. I think a lot of people want to move up in the industry really slowly because they are so timid, so worried they'll make a mistake, or won't be able to handle this or that. Sometimes you have to just dive in and start swimming.

Also, I agree you have to have a passion for film and I certainly love what I'm doing now, but I disagree that you should accept $50/day for long or spend years putting in your time. That's not thinking like a businessman, that's thinking like an artist, and I'm sorry ladies and gents we have plenty of "artists" in this town. If you learn to think like a businessman you'll pass all of the artists quickly and easily. Learn where the money is, show yourself as a professional and as a businessman, and focus on your artistic sensibilities on the side and pursue that avenue practically. The last projects I did were a food services training video shot this week, then before that a bunch of virtual tours and some interview footage. It wasn't the MOST fun, compared to making a short film you wrote and have been excited about for months, let's say, or a feature film that you directed, but I still enjoyed the work and I was well paid for it. The training video was actually quite a bit of fun, despite not sounding like it would be much fun, we threw some humor in there, spiced it up, had good actors, and we had fun doing the project. It can't be all about trying to be Steven Spielberg and making your dream feature. You have to be a bit realistic sometimes and figure out how you can actually get PAID to do film work.

As much fun as a short film is, they are not for money, they are just for experience, exposure, and fun.

As for film school students, I think the problem is attitude and not knowledge. Most film school graduates are certainly knowledgeable, at least somewhat, but I would say even then there are a lot of curious situations. I have never really taken a cinematography class, just an intro to cinematography basically, and I've never shot much with a camera, because I like to produce and direct (and write), but even I know more than these film school students I was hearing about the other day. My neighbor, who is in the entertainment industry (music producer), said he's putting together this project with celebrity interviews for a non-profit organization and he made the mistake of hiring film school students to shoot the interviews. He says they routinely forget basic equipment like the tripod, they don't show up on time, and they don't know how to light for the interviews, he complained of hard light on the faces, shadows, etc. I said that's pretty sad because even I know how to light for an interview on the face, I mean I told him I can think of three ways and I'm not a DP or a camera op or anything, I basically have a very average understanding of that field. Throw up a light with a chimera / soft box on it, a light with a c-stand in front that's holding a silk, or use a light disc and bounce soft light off it from the sun or from another light, etc. Those are the three I've seen DPs use so far and I'm sure I could even light an interview, but between the four of these film school students apparently they can't figure that out. It's stuff like that where I wonder what are they teaching these kids?

The film school I went to last, where my editor graduated from, he said that only about 3-4 of the 20 kids who graduated in his class could actually shoot something, anything, even camcorder footage, upload it to the computer, then burn it to a DVD. That's so simple I was doing that before I even knew what a c-stand was, honestly.
 
JonathanLB

thanks for the input. I'm basically just planning on working my butt of and doing what it takes to get into the business and your advice was helpful.
 
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