CHAPTER 47

BREAKING INTO THE INDUSTRY

 

You have finished your training period and must now make the transition from student or learning filmmaker to freelance crew person. Raising yourself by your own bootstraps requires that you publicly establish your skills, first of all, by making films and showing them at festivals or conferences. Getting work won't be easy or fast, and it may depend on the luck of your cohort. Many people leaving school remain in contact with each other, and the good luck of a cameraperson means the good luck of several more unit members whom he or she can recommend.

YOUR LOCATION MATTERS

You must live in a film-producing area to find employment. Either go to film school in or near a film-producing area, or be ready to move to one after you graduate. Many people dream of going home after film school and starting a film or video company there, but it seldom works, and if it does, there is a glass ceiling that keeps you perennially making commercials for Joe's Used Cars (Walk In, Drive Out).

FESTIVALS, CONFERENCES, AND EARNING RECOGNITION

During your learning period in film school (or out of it), you have made short works of 5–15 minutes, and now you should enter them in as many competitions and festivals as you can afford. Carefully check the entry conditions, maximum length specification, fee, and other expectations such as student status, or you will waste your time and money. If a festival only accepts film, it's pointless sending a digital film, but you'd be surprised how many people do so. If your digital film is in NTSC, be certain that a festival in Germany will accept anything that is not PAL. Pay particular attention to language or translation requirements. You may need to subtitle your film or supply a transcript to enter foreign competitions.

The best place to find out about festivals is the Internet. By entering “short film festival” in a search engine, I brought up around 100 Web sites. With another choice of search words, you would find even more. Beginning guidance on festivals is available through these Web sites:

1. www.film.queensu.ca/Links/Festivals.html This is a full list of festivals and their deadlines.

2. www.ufva.org/index.php This is the University Film & Video Association for North America's Web site, and it is a good site to check periodically.

3. www.filmfestivals.com/index.shtml This is a Web site devoted to festivals. It lists them by country and month, as well as by other criteria.

4. www.variety.com/ This is Variety magazine's Web site. Look up “Festivals.”

5. www.cilect.org This is the Web site for the international film schools association, and there are many Web links to databases, scholarly articles, and information of all kinds.

6. www.cyberfilmschool.com/links/festivals.htm This is a Canadian site that has much information for the independent filmmaker, including a full festival guide.

7. www.dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/MoviesandFilm/FilmFestivals/ This site is run by Yahoo, and it breaks festivals down by genres.

Films meant to compete in festivals should be short and snappy and avoid a welter of titles. The cassette should be cued up for viewing and should be professionally packaged. Festivals are so numerous and the entries so dismal that a competent piece will pick up an award or two without difficulty. If your work is really special, you may well pick up a number of awards, and the existence of these—more than your work itself—will recommend you to potential employers as someone out of the ordinary. Curiously, few people have the time or inclination to make judgments by actually seeing a film, but everyone is impressed by prizes.

Go to as many festivals and conferences as you can. They are great places to meet people of similar backgrounds and interests, and it's amazing how many ideas and possibilities emerge from informal social situations. You will get encouragement and stimulation from these festival gatherings, and who knows, maybe some partnerships or notoriety, too.

PERSONAL QUALITIES YOU NEED TO SHOW

Breaking into the film industry begins with building a good social and educational track record and having competent work to show. Whether you accomplish this in film school or outside it is immaterial, but it's always easier to learn from teachers than to learn without them. To make lateral career moves later in life, you will doubtless need the educational degree, but a degree does not impress media employers. Only awards, an attested good reputation, and demonstrably good work will get you taken seriously. How fast you advance in the film industry after you get a toehold, and what responsibilities people care to give you, depends on your contacts, luck, and maturity. Almost certainly you will start as a freelancer, dependent on your contacts and on how much work is available.

In the industry, just as in film school, you become established by maintaining positive and constructive relationships with others, and by doing good work that is completed on time and within the agreed parameters. Sustain this over a period of time and under grueling conditions, and your good reputation will slowly spread through the grapevine so you become a preferred crewmember. However, make a costly mistake and this will circulate to your detriment. Most of the splenetic Web site commentary you see about film schools (see www.filmmaker.com/loafs) comes from those who alienated partners by bucking the written and unwritten rules of conduct. A dead giveaway is poor writing discipline and a self-serving plethora of blaming.

COMPROMISE

Becoming known and fitting into a commercial system may seem like the slipway to compromising your artistic values, but it does not have to be. After all, the films on which we were raised were produced for profit, and many were good art by any standard. Almost the entire history of the cinema has its roots in commerce, with each new work predicated upon the ticket sales of the last. If cinema and capitalism go hand in hand, this marriage has a certain cantankerous democracy. Tickets are votes from the wallet that prevent the cinema from becoming irrelevant or straying too far from the sensibilities of the common man. Shakespeare and his Globe Theatre Company flourished under similar conditions. Then as now, purists got themselves to a monastery.

To acquire a cautionary sense of the market forces at work, grit your teeth and regularly read the cinema trade journal Variety (www.variety.com). Read everything you can about recent low-budget productions and their tortuous relationship to distribution by following the The Independent, which is published by the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (www.aivf.com). Work your way through the independent filmmaking Web sites for a sense of international trends, beginning with www.cyberfilmschool.com. Go to genre festivals and see examples of your preferred kind of work so you know in what area and at what level you are competing.

PATHS TO THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR

Of those successfully completing film school, the majority who get jobs in the industry go into the ancillary crafts. This is both a realistic and honorable decision. To employers you are what you have done before and can show on the screen. To become a director, then, you must continue making exceptional short films, and you will need more than one excellent script. I mentioned in Chapter 46 three types of candidates for professional work in film or video:

1. The crew craftsperson

2. The crew craftsperson with directing potential

3. The craftsperson who is a fully realized visionary and ready to direct professionally

All film work requires craft meticulousness all the time—in every area, and at every stage. Let us suppose that you have gone through 3–4 years of film school and have acquired a fundamental knowledge and experience in at least one of the fields of film- or videomaking. To make the transition from student to paid worker in the medium, look honestly at your track record and decide which of the previously mentioned categories is yours.

CRAFTSPERSON

Virtually everyone begins in the film industry as a humble craft worker assisting in the camera, sound, editing, production, or writing departments. Straight out of school, plenty of people get work as a grip, assistant editor, camera assistant, or assistant director, but this happens only if you have developed industry contacts and have proven skills, professional discipline, and great references from film professionals to prove it. If you are given work, you will be initially given very limited responsibilities and watched closely to see how you fulfill them.

If you left school with an excellent body of work that won national or international awards, you may be able to make your way by talking people into letting you direct either local commercials, or educational or industrial work. This can get you valuable experience with actors. A good resource for self-starters is DV Magazine (www.dv.com/magazine/). But more likely you will enter the field in a humbler position, so you must develop expertise in school in at least one craft specialty and use your school and its teachers to make the appropriate industry contacts. An important facet of choosing a film school is whether it has an industry internship program in which to prove yourself and get a foot on the first rung of the ladder.

INTERNSHIPS

Well-established film schools have internship programs that allow you to work unpaid as a professional and prove yourself. When choosing a school, then, it's smart to choose one with a thriving internship program. My own institution, Columbia College Chicago, has a program called “A Semester in LA” where producing and screenwriting students round out their knowledge in Hollywood. My school also places selected students who are near graduation at professional companies in an (unpaid) study-on-the-job program. Go to www.filmatcolumbia.com and under Special Interest look up Semester in LA Program, which lists Hollywood internships. Other major American film schools have similar programs, and foreign national film schools quite often have a symbiotic relationship with their own industry and use leading production figures as part-time teachers and mentors.

CRAFTSMAN WORKER WITH A DIRECTOR STRUGGLING TO GET OUT

Your bread and butter work will be entry-level craft work, but if you are ambitious to direct, continue developing your directing skills after you graduate. Keep social and professional contact with those ex-students whose values you share because getting established is long and lonely, and it is best done through networking with friends.

Film and video production has always been an area for the self-starter, so unless you are accepted as a full-time employee, you and your friends must make independent and cooperative efforts to get established. Form an entrepreneurial film unit around a likely script and shoot and edit sample sections digitally. Make sure you are working with a finished, professional, and commercially viable script from the outset. Commercial doesn't mean crass, it means that somebody somewhere would pay actual money to see it.

At the outset of your career, the best you can do is to keep the faith, work hard to keep body and soul together, and become acclimatized to the self that emerges under duress. Fire, said Seneca, is the test of gold, and adversity is the test of strong people. Developing an artistic identity rests now on your ability to live life courageously and fully, and this, all by itself, will lead to a fulfilling and meaningful life no matter where it takes you.

A decided point of view on the human condition emerges gradually during much active study of, and experience in, living. The operation is one of maturing— a tempering process that happens as you withstand the pressures and discoveries associated with work, intimate relationships, marriage, parenthood, and other crucial responsibilities.

Most barriers to your directing may seem to lie with those higher up—in your film school or in the film and television industry—but really they lie mostly within yourself. If you are normal, your early professional life is centered on mundane fundamentals that do not equip you with much to say that is out of the ordinary. If and when you have worked beyond this, you will eventually want to express it. That identity will be sensed as an aura of authority and will be implicitly recognized by others around you. When you have it, you'll know it. Until then, keep working.

THE VISIONARY: DIRECTING STRAIGHT OUT OF SCHOOL

As I have said, it is a rare and remarkable human being who moves straight from school into directing, and a distinctly endangered one if success comes too quickly. Directing this early usually comes only to people whose early work gains them immediate recognition. Roman Polansky's earliest films, Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) and The Fat and the Lean (1960), forcefully express a skeptical view of the human condition through surreal allegory. Profound suffering as a child in central Europe during WWII lies behind these convictions—experiences that nobody would ever choose or want. Some have vision thrust upon them; some find it over time.

To be a first-rate director or a screenwriter is really to have learned something about life that you must give to others as a compelling story. For those deeply marked and deeply ambitious, the time may be now, and their ambition and persistence will overcome most obstacles. Film school is the best, though not the only, place to find out whether you have the vision, leadership, and sheer drive to put together outstanding films. Such films win festival prizes, which in turn provide professional openings and momentum.

Filmmaking is essentially a capitalist endeavor, so you must also be an entrepreneur who can assemble packages, about which much has been written to help the novice (see this text's bibliography). If you are to be paid for your work, you will need to have tastes shared by a sizeable chunk of the paying public, something you cannot control. You can no more decide to become a popular director than you can decide to become Shakespeare or Elvis Presley.

EXPERIENCED INDUSTRY WORKER WANTING TO DIRECT

If you are in the film industry and have a frustrated director inside, consider setting up a unit of your peers to cooperatively produce independent work that will benefit all of you. Shoot some scenes of a script on speculation, knowing that everyone's skills will be appreciably improved. If you shoot a complete feature film, make absolutely certain you have a viable script in the first place, because this is a murderously expensive way of discovering a script's weaknesses. Keep in mind that film labs are full of abandoned feature film negatives, and these represent a graveyard of poor scripts, inept production, and of money wasted by people who trusted in luck more than researching good advice.

If your piece is commercially viable, decently acted, and wins a festival or two, you have a chance of getting it distributed and recouping your costs. The main thing is to get experience and encouragement to go on to something bigger and better.

Do not listen to the greybeards who say, “Never make films with your own money.” That's another way to say you should never invest in yourself. The world doesn't work that way. Who will believe in your talent if you aren't willing to take any risks to prove it? Make several short films, and the odds keep improving. People only accomplish what really matters to them.

FREELANCING TO GAIN EXPERIENCE

The aspiring director will for a long time have to use his or her craft skills (camera, editing, sound, production management, or writing) to fulfill quite humdrum commercial needs. You may find yourself expending lots of imagination and effort crewing for educational, industrial, training, or medical films, and occasionally even shooting conferences and weddings. Doing this reliably and to high standards will teach you a great deal. A training in industrials and documentaries served Robert Altman and many other directors well. Commercials, too, are a good training ground because incredible expense and effort are focused on highly specific ends. The superb technical and production knowledge you gain can later be transferred to the features setting—if you can let go of the good living that commercials can provide.

Most crew work is freelance, which means feast or (mostly) famine living conditions until demand for your services exceeds supply. As an aspiring director, you must aim to be in the right place at the right time, taking other craft work until, in Mr. Micawber's immortal words, something turns up. While making a precarious living as a freelance technician, try to continue making your own films with contemporaries who are also struggling to gain experience and recognition. By investing in your own talent and developing it to the point where you have concrete, visible results, you then have something to offer an employer or a sponsor. Once you get a little paid directing work, you start building up a track record and a reputation. It is this and festival recognition that recommend you for more interesting and demanding work.

TELEVISION AS A ROUTE

American television produces very little drama outside the soaps and sitcoms made in Hollywood, but these, if you can get work there, represent exceptional experience in fast, professional-level production. European television, in particular French, British, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Italian, has nurtured many fine directors and actors, and some of these countries, in self-defense against the rapacious attractions of the Hollywood product, have schemes to help developing local product get off the ground.

In Amsterdam, the Maurits Binger Film Institute (www.binger.ahk.nl/) teaches in English and accepts graduated students on a competitive basis who have promising script ideas. The aim is to help them develop their scripts to a professional level and then link them with an appropriate European production company. The best way to find out what your own country offers is to use the Internet to trawl for information, beginning with independent filmmaker Web sites. One site leads by links to another, but keep a log as you go to serve as the metaphorical ball of string so you can find your way back.

There is a crying need in the United States and elsewhere for first-rate regional production such as the Amber Group in the north of England (see www.amber-online.com/) or the Dogme Group in Denmark. The Dogme people have individually moved on to other things, but they still can be read about in the Internet. These collectives have pioneered filmmaking that challenges the formulaic vision of the mainstream production centers. The problem remains in convincing money sources that regional can mean something other than second-rate. Mostly such prejudices are far from misplaced.

CRAFTS THAT LEAD TO DIRECTING

Some craft areas lead to directing much more readily than others. Editing is a common route because the editor orchestrates acting, directing, camerawork, sound, music, and everything else. Writers and directors of photography also make the transition, and occasionally so do actor-writers, comedians, and even the visionary choreographer or painter. Assistant directors, producers, and production managers seldom if ever become directors because they handle logistics and organizational details rather than creative ones.

If you really want to become a feature film director, you should perhaps make a choice between editing and camerawork, with a strong emphasis on screenwriting because you'll only get anywhere as a director by constantly winnowing and propagating film ideas.

If you can contrive to have both spare time and spare cash (usually mutually exclusive for freelancers) you should try to work with a theater group to gain experience with actors, and maybe emulate Fassbinder by making a short dramatic film every few weekends. If you are an actor or you already work in the theater, getting experience in filmmaking can be a prelude to working with your company as film actors.

DIRECTING DOCUMENTARIES STRAIGHT OUT OF SCHOOL

If you have studied documentary form and production, you may prefer to enter the film industry through nonfiction filmmaking (documentary, educational, travelogue, industrials, corporate, or promotional films). It will get you out in the world, and through working with a small crew you will immediately have that high degree of control and responsibility by which people grow. You should be warned that making a living in documentary is very difficult unless you have a nose for finding sensational subjects.

If you liked this book and want to try documentary work, its sister volume Directing the Documentary, 3rd Edition (Boston: Focal Press, 1998) will tell you how. Look first at the career section. As I have implied all along, documentary and fiction are allied genres, and experience in documentary has been a wonderful preparation for many a feature film director. Don't take any notice of the patronizing attitude many in features take toward docs. Becoming a big fish in a small pool is good for many who are highly motivated but lack the connections or confidence to break into the big feature league. There is plenty of nonfiction peripheral work if you are resourceful. It pays a slender living, but you will be working for yourself, and in the process you will self-administer a terrific further education. Many people with long-term fiction goals start in nonfiction work or in commercials (if their technical control is good enough) and then try later for fiction work.

IMPORTANCE OF THE SAMPLE REEL

Because you are what you can show, you need more than anything a sample reel of work that demonstrates your capabilities to prospective employers or financial backers. If you have some original directing work, this may help you get interviews for feature crew work. If you have good screen work, you must have a script or two in case somebody is impressed enough to ask what you would direct if you could. It should be a superb script, and you should be able to pitch it like a practiced impresario.

DEVELOPING NEW PROJECTS

FINDING FICTION SUBJECTS

Re-read Chapters 2 and 3 of this book for a full treatment of sources for stories. What follows here places that information in a more commercial perspective.

People who invest in films do so to make money, not films. If they could make $50 million in 2 weeks by backing horses or making potato chips, horses or potato chips is where they would put their money. Any feature film you propose must have wide audience appeal, so you must be equipped and ready to argue that you have the goods to hit the jackpot.

The search for subjects is really a search for those issues and situations that stir you at the deepest levels. Most of the population has opted to live in pursuit of comfort and happiness and will never unlock the rooms in which those shadowy parts are stored. Maybe because sustained comfort brings a sense of deprivation (“The unexamined life isn't worth living,” Plato c.428–348 B.C.) they need you and your films to live vicariously by watching other lives unfold on a screen—lives that are akin to their own.

When you search for subjects that will move a wide audience, you are in reality searching for the ways you can connect with and represent a sector of contemporary humanity. You will do this by plunging into the mainstream of modern awareness. This requires a keen curiosity about the ebb and flow of currents in contemporary society, not just those egocentric concerns circulating in restricted areas.

For this you will need to read books, newspapers, and journals omnivorously; to feel that political and international affairs are your responsibility; and to assume that poets, novelists, and songwriters are your equals because you share in a common consciousness-raising endeavor. It means striving to discover the humanity you share with writers, painters, poets, and philosophers of the present and the past and finding your own story in tales, myths, and legends. You will need a deep curiosity about the suffering and dreams of other people, and other peoples.

During this quest you will find fellow spirits. Some will be on the other side of the grave, their voices still urgent and speaking personally to you through their works. Some will be very much alive, struggling to make sense and give utterance. Some will become your friends and collaborators, allies with whom you face the world and tell what it's like to be alive at this moment and in this particular century.

You have probably noticed a strange omission from my list of recommended sources—other films. Of course you will be seeing films and will be influenced by them. But film subjects and film approaches should ideally be developed from life, not from other films; that road leads to derivative and imitative work having no authentic voice.

If there is a writer whose tastes and interests you share and with whom you can collaborate, you should jointly explore subjects and make a commitment to meet regularly even if he or she is not currently writing. Truly creative partnerships are tougher, more resilient, and more likely to lead to a strong, marketable story idea than trying to be a one-person band.

FINDING AN AGENT

No commercial film company will read unsolicited scripts. It is too wasteful of their time and too risky. Reputable film companies only read scripts forwarded by reputable agents, so your scripts (if you write them) must first find favor with an agent. This person's job is to advise you and represent your work wherever he or she thinks it will find favor. A good way to find an agent is to win a screenwriting competition, but Web sites for screenwriters are full of up-to-date advice on how to work your way up the ladder. The Writers Guild of America's Web site (www.wga.org/) lists agents of different degrees of accessibility. Some accept only a letter of inquiry, some accept new writers, and some accept new writers only with a reference from someone known to them. One thing the whole film industry agrees upon is that there are too few original scripts, so it follows that there are channels open to new product.

FORM AND MARKETABILITY

More than just content, a film is also a way of seeing. The implication is important: How a film shows its world may be more important than its plot or subject. There are only a limited number of plots, but infinite ways of seeing—as many as there are original characters. The special subjectivity of characters and of the teller of the tale means that creativity in developing form is equally important as ingenuity in finding content.

So building an artistic identity means not only finding a subject of general interest to an audience, but also a stimulating way of seeing it. Part 4: Aesthetics and Authorship dealt with the many issues that affect form.

CONTINUING TO LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK

It is possible to see other people's films and learn very little. The problem is that good films tend to fascinate us to the exclusion of our critical (and thus learning) abilities. You can overcome this by methodically analyzing with a VCR or DVD player whatever film speaks strongly to you. A basic study method is suggested in Chapter 3, Project 3–3: A Scripted Scene Compared with the Filmed Outcome, which you might modify as follows:

• See the whole film as an audience does, without stopping and without allowing your expertise to make you reflect on technique.
• Write down dominant impressions, especially what the film conveys thematically. Most importantly, what does it leave you feeling?
• Run the film one sequence at a time, making a block diagram of the movie as a whole.
• Analyze each sequence for its contribution to the whole.
• Analyze any special technique each sequence uses to achieve its ends, and assess the language or form chosen. Was it appropriate? Could you see a better way of reaching the same communicative ends?
• Keep a journal of thoughts, ideas, techniques, and approaches, and add to it regularly.

From this exercise you will learn an immense amount about the way movies affect you, and how film art is used to create certain kinds of persuasion. Another priceless outcome is that you can now intelligently question the makers of the film if they happen to appear in your area. Nobody who labors to create something as complex as a film, no matter how famous, is indifferent to truly informed questions and comments. Out of such conversations, links are formed. Informal though they are, contacts of this nature frequently lead to work of some sort.

If you knowledgeably admire someone's work, he or she will take very seriously your desire to work and learn. Film work is irregular and unpredictable; film crews may suddenly need a gopher or will find room for an observer. If your dedication shows you value that position, you become someone special— someone everyone will remember. Film people seldom forget how hard it was to get started; work most often goes to those who earn a warm spot in everyone's heart.

PRESENTING YOURSELF FOR EMPLOYMENT

Following are some pointers to help you find employment. Employers look for a knowledge of what they do and for strong signs that you would fit well into their environment. This depends on how you handle yourself, how specific your knowledge and experience are, and how committed you are to the kind of work they do.

1. Resumé. A good resumé is vital when you seek work. It should be professionally laid out (get a book on resumé writing or take a workshop) and should present what you have done in the best light. Show evidence of pertinent employment, dependability, good character, and (only where relevant) initiative. A range of different employment is good, and you should have letters of recommendation available from past employers ready for inspection. Include any work you did for good causes because selfless commitment to a community will impress.

2. Awards. The most persuasive recommendation will be awards won at festivals. The Web site www.studentfilms.com/ shows student films on the Internet and, like many sites, has links to other organizations. Awards are inordinately persuasive in swinging votes during a funding application or in securing an employment interview. Nothing, they say, succeeds like success, and people with judgmental responsibilities often seem most impressed by prizes and honors. Make sure you get yours.

3. Your reel. With your resumé enclose a 3–5 minute sample VHS cassette that shows brief highlights of your work. The items should be numbered and titled, and the clips should be itemized on a separate list. Collectively they should show your range of work and professionalism. The aim is to make yourself look as capable, flexible, and interesting as possible. The work on your reel should be keyed to your resumé and to the kind of work you are seeking. Some people put together a different sample tape according to the type of job or company they are approaching. A home computer able to assemble custom reels is a great asset.

4. Knowledge of your potential employer's business. Whenever you make a job application, use your research skills to learn everything possible about the business or organization. Write to the appropriate individual by name in the company or group. With your resumé send a brief, carefully composed, individual cover letter that shows how your work goals might best contribute to what the company does.

5. Follow-up call. After a week, follow up with a phone call. You will probably be told the company has no positions open. Ask if you might stop by for a brief chat in case a position opens up in the future.

6. Interview. If you are granted an interview, dress conservatively, be punctual, and have all relevant information at hand. How professionally you conduct yourself is the key to whether the interviewer decides to take matters further.

7. Leave your resumé and reel. Bring further copies of your resumé and reel to leave with the interviewer in case he or she, or anyone you meet, is interested in your capabilities.

8. Let the interviewer ask the questions and be brief and to the point when you reply.

9. Be ready to work gratis. If necessary and if you can afford to do so, volunteer to work without pay for a set period. It will give you experience, a reference, and possibly a paying job after you've proved yourself.

10. Have questions ready. Interviewers often finish by asking if you have any questions, and you should have two or three good questions ready. This is an opportunity to engage your interviewer in discussion about the company's work. Most people in a position to hire are proud of what their company does, and through conversation you may learn something useful.

11. Extend the contact. When the interview is over, ask politely if you can keep in touch in case something turns up. Polite persistence over time often makes the deepest impression because it marks you as someone who really wants to join them.

People accustomed to dealing with a volume of job seekers can rapidly distinguish the determined realist from naively hopeful souls who are adrift on alien seas. The judgment is made not on who you are, but on how you present yourself—on paper, on the screen, and in person. You'll only do this well if you do your homework through resourceful reading and networking on the phone. You don't know the right people? Write this on your cuff: Anyone can get to anyone else in the world in five or fewer phone calls. This means that anyone can find out a lot before an important meeting.

If you know that shyness is holding you back, don't wait around for a benefactor to recognize you. Be proactive and do something about it. Do it now. If you need assertiveness training, get it. If none is available, join a theater group and force yourself to act, preferably in improvisational material. It will be an impressive addition to your resumé and will do wonders for what you project about yourself. Your fingerprints prove you're different, but they won't get you employed. You've got to actively demonstrate your worth to the world. You alone can take action to start believing in yourself, and only you can make yourself stand out from the herd.

Thank you for using this book. If our paths cross, don't hesitate to tell me whether it helped and how I can make it better.

My very best wishes go with you.

CHECKLIST FOR PART 8:CAREER TRACK

The recommendations and points summarized here are only those most salient or the most commonly overlooked from the previous part. To find more about them or anything else, go to the Table of Contents at the beginning of this part or try the index at the back of the book.

To get on target for becoming a director:

• Get hands-on knowledge of all the production processes you are most likely to oversee.
• Accept that you'll need to know writing, acting, camerawork, sound, and editing.
• Look to your temperament and track record for clues about which specialty to take as your craft stepping-stone toward eventual directing.
• Resolve to make lots and lots of short films.

As a director you'll need to:

• Become a tough-minded leader who leads by example
• Be able to function even when feeling isolated
• Be passionately interested in other art forms
• Have original, informed, and avidly critical ideas about your times

To make educational progress:

• Use good short works to argue for your competency at directing longer ones.
• Be ready to adapt and improvise when working low-budget (people and imagination make films rather than equipment).
• Use trial and error in a long developmental process prior to production to arrive at professional-level results.

To entertain your audience means:

• Giving the audience mental, emotional, and imaginative work, not just moving pictures of externals
• Using myth and archetype to underpin anything you want to be powerful
• Using screen language that suggests a lot more than it shows, so your audience can imagine

Authorship essentials require:

• Using your work to search for your artistic identity, not illustrating what you know
• Knowing what is average, normal, usual, and clichéd, and doing something fresh and original instead
• Picking a form after you've found a story—remembering that form follows function
• Knowing what marks your life has left on you and being ready to make art from them
• Knowing the unfinished business in your life and using your art to go into dangerous waters; only what's scary is really worth doing

Film school:

• A good one will massively accelerate your career, if you get established after school.
• No school can give you the energy, persistence, intelligence, and drive to succeed. These are hard choices that you make daily.
• You can't avoid technical stuff, writing, or bouts of drudgery in filmmaking.
• Leave your ego at the door.
• A filmmaking community, finding your equals, and the immersion of film school are what come first, not the equipment. The most famous and productive film school was once Lodz in Poland at a time when it had almost no equipment or funds.
• Check out a school's production facilities, its support for production, morale, and attitude toward non-star students (the majority).
• Check the production activity of senior faculty and the experience of those teaching beginner classes (often they are graduate students recycling knowledge only recently acquired).
• Only self-starters succeed in freelance arts, so use the school and don't hang about waiting to be recognized. You have to create an identity for yourself and create a visibility through energy and excellence.
• Plan your life, break tasks down into stages, and set goals and deadlines for yourself. Confusion and inertia overtake many people when control of their lives passes into their own hands. Don't be one of them, and don't depend on anyone showing you the ropes.
• Make friends by seeking and using good advice, especially from active faculty.
• Take little notice of conventional wisdom among students, it's always full of negativity and doom.
• Don't kid yourself that you're keeping your options open by avoiding craft specialization. Decide what you're suited to do and pursue it—it will be your bread and butter.
• Learn to be creative from those with a positive attitude toward work, authority, and other students.
• Do not under any circumstances leave film school without saleable skills in something other than directing—that is, production, camera, sound, editing, production design, special effects, etc.
• Make sure you have a reel of good and varied work as evidence of your competency.
• Your parents, not the film industry, care that you got a degree; it won't get you film work.
• Get all the internship experience you can and all the references from film and video employers that are possible so you can pump up your resumé.
• Excellent directing work, prizes to prove it, and a great script may get you into directing straightaway, but it's unwise to expect it and foolish not to prepare for a less dazzling destiny.

After film school when you're looking for work, remember:

• Reaching the top rung of film school prepares you to apply for the bottom rung of work in the film industry.
• Send out a professional looking resumé and a 5-minute VHS or DVD reel of clips from your best and most varied work. Follow up with a politely insistent call asking for a chat.
• Know where you want to work, know who's there, what they do, and keep trying.
• Don't embarrass employers by overestimating your abilities, importance, or potential.
• You are what you have done.
• One or two whiz kids make it big, the rest move s-l-o-w-l-y up through the freelance ranks and usually take several years to achieve regular employment.
• Film or video is always a small professional community, even in Hollywood. Everyone watches everyone else. Good people get known the way they do in a village. If you work well and are always a good trooper, you'll come to be valued.
• Think of starting in nonfiction to gain experience and worldly immersion.
• Your capital is your reliability, resourcefulness, and capacity for originality. Work night and day at expanding your mind in all the arts.
• Don't believe in talent; believe in persistent self-development.
• Learn from others, especially from their mistakes (we all make them).
• Learn how the funding circus works.
• Plug into all the information sources and follow all the trade information.
• Don't listen to cynics. They'll tell you the world is going to the dogs and that you will never succeed.
• Know what you want. People accomplish what matters to them and not much else.
• Things happen because of personal connections and friendship, not merit alone.
• Get proficient at networking. Anyone can get to anyone else in the world by personal connection in five or fewer phone calls.
• There are a lot of highly intelligent, kind, and responsible people in the film and video industry. They all work on junk a lot of the time, and you will, too, until someone genetically re-engineers mass taste.
• You can win the pro's respect, affection, and help if you earn it.
• Keep on writing, keep on making short projects, keep on entering them in competitions and festivals.
• Expect the freelance life in a collaborative medium to take a toll on your personal life.
• Believe in yourself and work with others who do so, too.
• Keep the faith.