Moving to __?___ city for TV / film production. Need advice!

S

shawn.w

Active member
Hey everyone,

First let me say thanks for taking the time to help me out, it's great to find an online community of this quality.

I recently graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Cinema and Photography, and after completing some projects in my home town I'm now planning to head out to a larger market in hopes of finding work on a professional set / production.
First let me give you an idea of the type of work I'm interested in doing. I would classify it as work that strives to hit on universal themes or deliver a message. Some of my favorite fiction films are: "the brothers bloom", "the fall", "the lord of the rings", "i heart huckabees", "the truman show", "one flew over the cuckoos nest".

And for documentaries: "no end in sight", "roger & me", "the fog of war"

Just wanted to give you guys an idea of the type of work I would prefer in case some cities are better known for one type of work over another. Of course I have no problem developing my skills by working on music videos or other projects with less of a lifetime, but ideally I would like to find a place where I could work on both.


Since LA and NYC are the obvious choices, I would love to hear someone elaborate on the difference in the film scenes of each, or how each is looking right now in terms of gaining a job or internship. or the difference in atmosphere, or pro / con for each.

aside from that any recommendations on other cities I could look into along with any useful information on their film / TV scene would be great. let me just say that so far I've had people recommend: Toronto, Boston, and even Wellington, NZ and Sydney, AU. International recommendations welcome.

PS. I'm also very interested in adventure or nature films. Work at national geographic or discovery would be a dream.

Thanks so much! look forward to seeing what you guys / gals have to say.

- Shawn
 
Shawn, congrats on making the move. don't take this the wrong way but film making is one of the most competitive fields and everyday tons of aspiring folks are striving to join the industry in various capacities. Its good that you have a fairly good idea of the kind of films that you would like to associate but the fact of the matter is you would be lucky to work on any film even if you don't like the genre. My advised would be to be open and grab anything that comes your way because guess what if you don't somebody else would!!

as far as areas both LA and NY are equally good but NY tends to have more people involved in documentary compared to LA. Another advantage of NY is you could extend your search for film projects in the tri-state area including Philly where a lot of the filmmakers are moving to as the costs get too high in NY.

hope that helps

cheers

-krish
 
Knoxville, TN, has a very large production industry... both large networks and small boutique production companies around here.
 
Thanks for the info guys. I am becoming well aware of the small number of jobs along with the competitive nature of the scene right now. But I would still be interested to hear more opinions on what locations might fit my persuasion.

I am especially interested in options like Knoxville, TN (thanks CV2) because I've heard that both LA and NYC are high risk for starters at this point. Yet I'm still interested in hearing recommendations or comparisons of NYC and LA as I may not move for a few months and things may change in the meantime.

- thanks guys!
 
same boat as you man...

I graduated in June here in Cincinnati, and haven't really had much luck on landing anything good here locally. So, I'm sucking it up, and moving to Brooklyn to live with some grad friends of mine who moved there in August trying to "make it".

They're working, but they're not union, so the jobs aren't doing anything cool at all, and they have different interests than me. One wants to be a producer, one a director, the other is now an edit assist at a post house called Jigsaw.

I personally have always been the DP for everything I've shot in school, and shoot constantly, so that's where I want to be...will I find anything in New York, I don't know. But, I have a little money saved up, so I hope that I can find something in the few months that the money will last me, because coming back home isn't an option right now.

best of luck man, and keep in touch with people on here, it's more helpful then you can imagine
 
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