It's important to have a focused, crystal-clear idea of what you want to do, even if you change your mind along the way. Next, you need a five year plan. Once you have figured this out, and really thought about the exact place in the artistic web you want to work in, you have several options as to how to get there. One is to attach yourself to a working group that shares your artistic goals. Another is to become an indie that is really, well, an indie--a new voice. Right now, crowd fundraising is one of the hottest prospects for moving up in the arts business; however, there are already a lot of people diving in. There are many more directions you can take, and the trail is pretty well marked at this point.

Shifting gears for a moment, think about two more related things: your skills sets and your electronic portfolio. The skills you acquire, basically, a real list of all the questions you can say yes to, like, can you use X to do Y, is a resource that if properly established, and maintained daily, will last you a lifetime. These things need to be presented somehow to the world, in the form of actual art, in conversation, online, and so on. When I hire someone, I am always shocked at the lack of a basic skill set. I see plenty of passionate, hardworking talented people every day; skills, not so much.

On the artistic side, there is a shortage of material that tells a compelling story. Think about working in nontraditional media for new ideas about story-telling, for example, Noh Theatre, Javanese Wayang Kulit, Butoh, Koodiyattam, to name just a few. Pretty much all the good stories have been told already, go out and find them.

A good way to start a career is to develop a mailing list and start your own newsletter. Sounds pedestrian, doesn't it? We have a newsletter. This will train you for the basic social and internet skills you will need, should you define your goal as professional work. When you launch your Kickstarter project, it would be handy to have for example a million YouTube hits and minimum10,000 subscribers on combined platforms as a base. Easily doable; anyone can do that.

Anticipate the next big thing, and study up on it. Holography is around the corner, what do you know about it?

Learn to speak HTML fluently. That's the world we live in. Crap code is crap product.

Lastly, it takes a high level of commitment to be successful, and realistically it is probably a two percent market, just like any other work in the arts, that is, with a degree of some sort, two percent of graduates will find some sort of high level professional work, and five to seven percent will have work of a more peripheral nature. Improving your skill set increases your chances, but, on some level, a certain amount of luck is involved as well.

I would say only get into it if you truly love it. Don't expect to ever make a great living working in TV or Film. All my income comes from working in TV and video production, but I have friends that just got a crap job out of high school at a bank (is that fucked or what?) and they have the big house, expensive car, and the 2.5 kids. So yeah even though I have roommates and even scrounge to pay rent I don't really regret it. It's just not for everyone.

Also be really careful on who you do free work for (everyone wants free work), most projects are not worth doing because the people will never get you paying work or introduce you to people that can connect you into the biz. Also if you do free work for somebody for a long time, and then have to eventually quit after a few episodes (because you need to find paying work to eat) those people will talk crap about you and drag your name through the mud as much as they can. I have had it happen to me and seen it happen to my friends time and time again.

Bottom line, it is doable you just can't give up, just keep pushing. I have been at it for 17 years and I still feel like I'm "starting out". Every time I meet a head of a production company the first question they ask usually is are you in school or would you like to intern? :-/. I have had so many false big breaks over the years, that I don't even get excited when a Hollywood producer calls me asking me to option one of my shows.

As far as posting videos randomly on Vimeo with no promotion, you will be surprised who watches your video and contacts you...

Wow, thanks for all of these responses. I just recently moved to New York City and have been looking for collaborators for creative work while doing a service job and finding an assistant editing position or PA spot at a production house. It's exactly as a lot of you guys have been putting it. You need to just make your own work, develop on your skills and constantly continue to learn WHILE you are creating in order to make yourself recognizable as a payable film maker. I've applied to dozens of companies looking for employment and everyone says "if you haven't done this before, we don't want you on the team." But how do you get that first exposure to the job you're applying for if no one will hire you for your first gig? It's without a doubt a paradox that can't be fixed without creating your own work on your own budget and managing your own brand of creative intelligence. AND, very importantly, finding "co-conspirators" to work with in a pro-creative environment, because you really can't do it alone. I'm doing that now, working on a web series with my film friends in New York while getting by with the bills through a low pay service job. It sucks at first, because I'm paying a sick amount on my students loans every month for a college education that has thus far gotten me nowhere in the workforce, but that's not what's at stake anymore - you're desire to persevere through the struggle and find yourself a place and time to work creatively at what you love, and struggling because you are capable of loving your work, is what counts.

Thank you so much for all of these comments and personal stories. A lot of them have been true in my own experiences since my first post, and a lot of them I can already tell are insights that I'll be grateful to take with me down the road.

You're being too sensitive and throwing a harsher charge at me than is warranted by that flippant comment.

Well, I see where you're coming from now... and usually, I don't give a crap about stuff like this. It just, again, seemed odd when I read it for the first time. It wasn't a personal attack or anything. Stuff can sometimes read weird on the internet.

Film students too often write about what they know: their friends and lifestyles. Unfortunately, for the typical student, they haven't lived enough for their lives/surroundings to yield interesting drama.

Agreed here again. cough Tiny Furnature and Girls cough

I hate all that mumble-core shit. So self congratulatory and indulgent it makes me sick.

Not wanting to make a film about boring white people in a diner constitutes "prevalent racism"?

Yep. It was the way you said it. If there were no race-related undertones... why not just say "boring people in a dinner". Pointing out skin color (ANY color), as an association to something being boring or not, denotes racism. Skin color, even of your own race, has no reason to even be mentioned. Therefore the presence of it, denotes the possibility of a vindictive agenda.

I agree with all your points. I just found the race-related slights a bit odd...

@BurnetRhoades

There are numerous instances of sci-fi shorts with heavy FX -- typically created by the director -- leading to development deals. It's only a recent trend but it happens. And obviously if I thought making a FX heavy short in and of itself would be my ticket to the big leagues I wouldn't have gone through hell making a traditional film in a mine with zero FX. I think producers view these FX-driven shorts as a demonstration of the director's ability to both harness FX as a story-telling device and create a unique world for a fraction of the amount they spend to get the same results. If it was just the post work that mattered they'd replace all directors with post guys and save millions.

@bwhitz Not wanting to make a film about boring white people in a diner constitutes "prevalent racism"? First, my short is explicitly anti-racist and I'm white. Second, there are an abundance of short films about boring white people in a diner. My point was not that white people are inherently boring, but that the glut of typical film school shorts makes it necessary to take a more imaginative approach. Perhaps I should've said "boring millennials" instead.

At any rate, that's a pretty heavy accusation to throw around with no justification. Can we stick to the topic and relax on the personal attacks?

Fact is, if a movie makes money it doesn't matter to the studio if the director is buggering underage prostitutes on set or has a hooker with coke on her breasts at the director's behest. Success forgives all faults and failures during the course of making a movie.

Well, as much as I do advocate cocaine and hookers on set... I'm also anxiously awaiting the day when the whole industry is re-booted again (like it was in the 70's) and directors actually have to posses skills and understand the craft film-making again. I like to know when I can actually give praise to a guy for his/her own merits... and not just that they happen to be in situation where a crew was just "given" to them.

Whether he was an absentee director or not has nothing to do with VFX, which was how he was even brought into this discussion.

I was just using it as an example of studios/producers wanting directors with more skills than subjectively deciding weather or not they like a take or not. I mean, shit, anyone could do that. What's stopping Kobe Bryant or Justin Bieber from "directing" a movie if that's only qualification required? That would attract a HUGE audience no doubt... so why not?

hah-hah, oh, well if a producer says so. Forget the fact that it makes no sense and is factually inaccurate.

Yea, because what we read online and in magazine is soooo accurate. Come on, we all know how vindictive and misleading published statements in this industry can be. The REAL reasons for decisions like these are NEVER published or released. From the stories I've heard personally, trust me, these were the reasons. How are you seriously going to tell me, that you have some knowledge greater than actually hearing it from the mouths of people who made the decision? From what I heard, "this director" just stood around on set, saying when he liked stuff... this is NOT directing. The crew and above the line people were pissed. As they had to put in extra work to make up for the job that wasn't being done and got stiffed on the credit. As the director, obviously, get's all of it anyways. And yea, this does happen quite often. There are MANY cases of "ceremonial" directors, that get the position for whatever stupid reason may be. But really, do you really believe it right at all those people work to create a movie for you, that you get the credit for? I know why so many ego-maniacs are draw to directing now...

They really don't. All they really cared about with the fellows that make the VFX shorts is the hits they got.

By this logic, that "gangam style" dude should be directing all the movie this year....

Iron Man 3's new director, a writer, was a decision that had nothing to do with any kind of VFX knowledge. That's utter horse shit.

Oh ok, I didn't realize you also heard from one of the producers like I did. Sorry. And it wasn't just vfx knowledge. It was just general film-making executing knowledge that was lacking.

With a good DP and VFX Supervisor the director doesn't have to know anything about effects and they can concentrate on directing and working with the actors (ie. how Katheryn Bigelow works). Directors not pretending to know more than they actually do makes life much better for everyone involved.

No. THIS is utter horse shit. This is what untalented directors with no quantifiable skills want to believe. This is where the future is going. Directors are not just actor coaches. That's again, what untalented wannabees, WISH directing was. The good directors, the innovators who push the craft, can reasonably, do all the film-making jobs on set, if need be. To really direct, you need to know ALL the areas of the craft, so you can craft an end product that is GREATER than the sum of the individual disciplines.

Actually, if someone wanted to cross-train for a skill more important to "breaking in" they should study propaganda, er, public relations. Hype will outshine any visual effect you could dream of putting into a short subject with the hopes that it gets attention. Partnering with a full time "Ministry of Propaganda" as I like to think of the role, that is the ticket, if that person isn't also yourself.

Not directly... but they care about directors with actual skills outside of pretending like "they are artists".

They really don't. All they really cared about with the fellows that make the VFX shorts is the hits they got. How they got the hits, that's pretty incidental, but in the press they'll talk about VFX skills.

The directors out there that claim to have an understanding of VFX...they're liars.

Iron Man 3's new director, a writer, was a decision that had nothing to do with any kind of VFX knowledge. That's utter horse shit. Shane Black has never made or been a part of a heavy VFX film. He's a writer. His debut as a director was awesome, but it was a movie made by a writer. It likely had more to do with the executives at MARVEL being made up of executives that used to be douchebags at their previous studio jobs and so they're douchebags at MARVEL now.

With a good DP and VFX Supervisor the director doesn't have to know anything about effects and they can concentrate on directing and working with the actors (ie. how Katheryn Bigelow works). Directors not pretending to know more than they actually do makes life much better for everyone involved.

When directing absorbs VFX supervising, that's when you get the LotR movies, which would have been much better if the folks actually hired to VFX supervise were allowed to do so. But, hey, if you have a literal army of people on staff, isolated to an island in a remote part of the world to make your mistakes go away, well, Hollywood will call you genius.

edit: *FYI, whenever there's VFX work to be done Peter Berg goes surfing or plays on his Playstation handheld or phone. He's not involved and doesn't care to be. *