The New Way to Make a Living as a Filmmaker
Why to be a Filmmaker
The only real way to make video full time is to start working for yourself. When you work for yourself, video is no longer an afterthought it becomes what you do. Because video has become the most popular content on the Internet (YouTube, Vimeo) and everyone with a smart phone can create video (Instagram, Tik Tok), this means there are more demands than ever before for video professionals. There is never been a better time to be a filmmaker!
How to be a filmmaker
How do you go from just another shooter to becoming someone who creates quality video? To go from video being a hobby to video being a vocation is simple. All you have to do is shoot video! That’s right, just start getting out there and shooting video for no money.
You can’t get your skills better if you aren’t using them.
The mistake that most people make when going full time is they try and jump in too fast by immediately charging clients top dollar for video work without having the experience necessary to deliver the kind of quality these clients want and expect. And they make this mistake because they believe what they see on television (the best TV shows are typically done at great expense).
This is not an intelligent way to make the transition from part-time video professional to full time video professional. The best video professionals have a video portfolio which is filled with video work they did to get better, not the video work they want you to see which are videos that turned out perfectly. Either way your video should be online, having it online will allow other video people from around the world to critique it and give advice where you can improve next time.
Learning Video Production
Recently we were asked by UpCity about our thoughts of where is the best place to learn video production. We answered with Full-Time Filmmaker, they are an online video course that has been instrumental for us to be as great as we are at our job. What makes The Full-Time Filmmaker a great online resource is the value you get is well worth the price of entry. The content is constantly updated and improved upon, and being in a network of videographers is helpful to answer questions you may have.
What about us? The most difficult thing for us was, “How do you value creativity?” Having discussions about projects became a lot easier once Parker was able to convey the value of filmmakers.
Conclusion
An interesting idea I’ve heard is everyone is born with the same amount of talent, how it is allocated is what makes each person unique. I wanted to learn about technology in small doses, but I don’t know how to be creative and edit. That’s not what I wanted to learn. But Full-Time Filmmaker has sections that are interesting to me. I think it’s normal to learn things from the internet now. Film school is a good place to meet people, but you can learn the skills you need by doing it every day.
I started Hen’s Bread with a Sony A6000 with a kit lens and a light kit from Amazon for $130. The only reason why Hen’s Bread is as successful as we are today is that we practice every day and we’re willing to listen to someone else who might know more than us. However, best you learn, don’t feel ashamed from learning online rather than a film school. You can be successful in video production in 2022.
If you feel like it’s hard to compete with a world of emerging videographers, Hen’s Bread is creating a course on SEO and how to rank high on search results. The course should be available by March 2022 and we want to make it affordable because the only reason why you’re doing SEO is that you want to save money rather than someone else does it for you. We do have a service where we will do your SEO to get on top search results, but we want to encourage everyone to learn what we know so they can better compete in what’s thought to be a “saturated market”
Do what works for you and if it’s something you really care about, keep pushing. Video Production is a lot of hard work, but the payoff in creating content is well worth the struggles. We started off learning online and we’ll keep learning online to sharpen our skills.
Call us today to schedule us working with you!
Any Questions?
