Good write-up. Obviously, it applies to filmmaking as much as music. It's good to start early and harder to start late. But there are exceptions. :)

It's a worthwhile activity to reflect on how this applies to people who have tiny budgets and very few resources in terms of crew, etc and want to pursue indie filmmaking on a small scale. A lot of these folks want to write, direct, shoot, and edit everything--and a lot of times it seems that is their only option.

I'd say the topic title is wrong. It's not just a good article, it's great! I'd agree it applies to any craft job. Most jobs in any medium-large company are incredibly specialised, so you're not going to get anywhere if you approach a business with a vague idea that you want to do "film" or "music recording" (and yes, when I was at the BBC I was asked about both of those things by otherwise intelligent wannabe employees).

Let's imagine your were into recording music, like I was. In the BBC you would start by specialising in foreign-language news, or drama studio management, or any one of many types of recording / live work. A complex music show is a huge capital investment and you wouldn't be allowed to have any significant role in it unless you'd been there many many years. Actually, you may never get to do what you really want because in the really competitive areas, you're up against people with a huge range of experience - not that they might produce better-sounding results, but they will have the flexibility to cope with all sorts of different things that crop up, often with little notice and possibly not the right equipment to hand - and they'd keep everyone else calm during the process, and they'd know their job is not to enjoy the show but to get it out on time and to the right quality level. They would have got allocated to that show by putting in thousands of hours at much more menial jobs, for example editing, rigging mics, being on either end of an outside broadcast, doing speech recordings and audience PA feeds, and generally gaining a fantastic range of experience and knowledge, building up their expertise to the point where they can come up with the little extra thing that makes the whole thing magical - and thus they become the go-to person.

The flip side of putting in all the menial work is that, while you are on the way up, if you are willing to talk to people and spend unpaid time looking at other jobs, you will spot an opportunity or invent a job for yourself which no-one else was fulfilling. A bit of experience recording music made me realise I hated not being the performer. I'm thankful that I realised that very early on in my career, and spotted other more fulfilling opportunities which I either "took" or invented. Thanks to doing things like that, I became the BBC's location sound effects recordist, developed leadership exercises for commercial organisations in tv / radio / online projects, started a call centre, mentored a blind trainee, headed up organisation-wide strands of training and a thousand other projects equally diverse, very few of which were anything like what I thought I'd like doing, most of them roles I spotted and created for myself, and all of them a lot more interesting and challenging than what I thought I wanted to specialise in.

The exciting bits are balanced by the boring bits - but at least there are both!! There are always plenty of fairly shitty jobs, which someone has to do. In my day those were reclaiming audio tapes or transferring fairly crappy historic audio recordings off archive discs, or feeling your will to live slowly ebbing away while bulk-copying reviewers' copies to send out to them. Probably for a freelancer there are equivalent shitty (but vital) jobs like doing your tax returns or chasing up a client, which are less attractive than going out and videoing something or testing out your latest gizmo. And regardless of how experienced you are, certainly in the TV, Radio and Online media, a huge amount of work is done at unsocial hours (for example, rigging lighting overnight in the studios, to make full 24/7 use of these hugely expensive capital assets, or spending a Sunday morning crawling around inside the roof of a concert hall rigging mics).

Spending a while in a business doing (or watching people do) stuff like that, and you'll soon know if you really, really have the patience and the desire to stick with it long enough to do interesting things. I did, and I loved most of it, but more importantly I was part of some amazing projects. You have to really want to do it for the long haul, and you learn along the way that it's almost never about working on your own doing stuff you're passionate about, because it's about contributing to a team, and being flexible, and generally doing what someone else wants. The people who excelled did so because they were excellent at their craft AND because they were fantastically good at working with others.

I love the article's advice about talking to anyone you can (except musicians) and I guess the video / movie equivalent is talking to everyone except actors / presenters. My advice is to talk to middle-managers and resource allocators and the like. They are much misunderstood and even hated in the media industry, but I'd say you could do a lot worse than seeking one of those. This is because no-one ever talks to them, they will have their heads around some of the current detail and some of the future strategy and they will be aware of a lot more of the big picture (if they're any good) than most craft specialists. They will give you an idea of what your bit of the business will need in years to come, and you can then work on developing your skillset so you are positioned in the right place at the right time (and stay looking ahead). Your constant question should be "What's next?"

And take it from me, the best way to mic up an accordion is from as far away as possible, with the mic not plugged in. If you have to ask, you've obviously never been in a room with one!