Helping Yourself

There is one final lesson to consider as you strategize about a potential career in the film industry. This lesson involves the necessity of aggressively taking the initiative to propel yourself in whatever direction you wish to go, rather than waiting for circumstances or others to do it for you. You also need to keep your mind open to opportunities that may not be your first choice but get your foot in the door. For example, one of the authors of this book got his big break by obtaining a position in accounting at a major animation studio and was able to quickly move over to the production side. You have already expanded your skills in this course. Beyond that, you will need to gather particular tools that will promote yourself and your work, and lure not only employment but also an audience.

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Darren Aronofsky maintains a personal website where he can keep colleagues and fans up to date on his newest projects.

In Chapter 14 you learned about defining and learning from your audience. With digital technology and social media communication tools, you can also start building an audience for your work right now, even before you are a professional filmmaker who has sold, exhibited, or officially distributed (at least through formal industry channels) something. Thus, even as you continue to pursue your filmmaking education, you may begin plotting your strategy for what comes next. Creating tools and using them effectively right now, and onward into your career, will give you a platform on which to base your filmmaking endeavors.

What tools do we mean? What components will make up your platform? The following elements, when combined, are a great start for your personal platform:

image YOUR REEL SELLS YOU

Make sure your reel reflects not only your filmmaking skills but also your personality. If you enjoy humor, include humor. If you like color or loud music, try those things. Don’t shy away from being who you are—you, after all, are the person you are selling with the reel. But don’t include any profanity, nudity, graphic music, or extreme violence—even if you go in for such things, such elements will merely distract your viewer from the filmmaking skills you are trying to promote.

Demo Reel A demo reel is a video reel you create that showcases your finest work, edited and presented to highlight whatever aspect of your talents you want to emphasize. (See Action Steps: Creating a Demo Reel, below.) The reel is a tool designed to maximize your chances to impress the folks you are distributing it to. Therefore, it is more than worthwhile to spend the time necessary to cut it together effectively; you may also want to consider making multiple versions, or different reels altogether, if you are pursuing different types of work in various sectors of the industry. For example, a design-dominated reel won’t be much help if you are pursuing a cinematography job, and vice versa. It is convenient to have an online version available for people to easily access, but remember to always make sure that it is, in fact, accessible; that the link works; and that the video looks good when viewed on all browsers, mobile devices, and laptops.

ACTION STEPS

Creating a Demo Reel

The basic technical skills you have learned in this course are more than enough to give you the tools and ability you need to construct a sharp demo reel, but you still need specific goals for the reel and a plan for executing them. By “goals,” we mean: At whom are you targeting the reel? What kind of impression are you trying to make, and what kind of work are you trying to land with it? Obviously, your focus will be different depending on what kind of work you are pursuing. Here are some general guidelines for the elements you choose, how you put them together, and the philosophy you take in constructing the reel.

  1. image Start with a bang. Most professionals or recruiters won’t watch a reel for more than 15 seconds—and that’s being generous—unless it really grabs their attention. Even then, they will stop it and recommend that you be brought in for an interview. Therefore, lead with your best work. Do not spend time on an elaborate opening merely to introduce your name. The only reason people look at your reel is to quickly assess your abilities. Many young people miss opportunities because they organize their reel in chronological order.
  2. image Focus the reel to your desired job area. Be as specific as possible with the material you choose. If you are pursuing different types of jobs, make multiple types of reels, rather than relying on a single, generic reel. Target the reel for editing, cinematography, or whatever your specific goal is.
  3. image Limit the reel to your best work. This means limiting the length—generally keeping the reel short rather than trying to jam as many highlights as possible onto it. Go with your elite work only, even if the reel is shorter, rather than trying to pad it out.
  4. image Be careful with your editing. Even if your goal is not to pursue editing work, make sure your reel is cut professionally. Cut images to the beat of the music, don’t mix video imagery of different aspect ratios, use clean cuts, and don’t repeat footage. You can get help editing your reel, but be sure to credit those helping you—it shouldn’t hurt your chances as long as editing is not the job you are pursuing. At the same time, however, don’t overdo it by trying to impress with fancy cuts, unless doing so is crucial to what you are trying to illustrate. Keep things as simple as possible for the viewer to follow.
  5. image Emphasize technical abilities. If you are pursuing technical work, it may be a good idea to split the screen and show before and after images to illustrate your color grading or visual effects abilities.
  6. image Avoid work that isn’t yours. Some people have been known to mix in the work of others or collaborations that highlight areas that did not involve their efforts without making clear that is what they have done. For example, if you created only the sound effects for the scene, make that fact clear—don’t try to take credit for the dialogue editing or the cinematography. Not only is this dishonest, but it never pays off in the end, because it will eventually become clear if you don’t have the skills to do the work you are advertising. Further, outright plagiarizing someone else’s work on your reel is effectively a death sentence on your career. It’s a small community, people talk, and they have long memories. In the same vein, never use copyrighted music to spice up the reel unless you have received authorization to use it. There are tons of royalty-free options available, and there is no reason to take that kind of costly risk.
  7. image Slate the reel, label clips, and avoid spelling errors. In other words, do quality-control work. Make sure your name and contact information appear on the slate at the beginning and end, label each clip that appears so that the viewer knows what project or client it was for, and make sure everything is spelled correctly and the graphics are neat and presentable.
  8. image Accessibility. Make sure the reel is available both on physical media, such as a flash drive or a DVD, and online—on your website, a video-sharing site, or some combination thereof. It should be easy for people to see your reel, rather than a big challenge on an old type of media or in a strange or hard-to-play format. Therefore, for example, make sure that the media is playable in the place it is sent to. Countless reels from Europe have been discarded because they were in the PAL (European standard) format, rather than the NTSC (North American) video format. And check the media—play it yourself. Don’t give the recipient any technical excuse not to play and evaluate your reel.

image KNOW YOUR SEO

Master the art of search engine optimization to stay in control of your online identity, including using relevant keywords in blog-post titles, lead paragraphs, and metadata tags to ensure good search engine results; using #hashtags on keywords to make sure your social media posts are searchable; and sharing useful information in social media postings on topics people are likely to be searching for.

Website Similarly, even as a student, with the availability of a host of cheap or free web-building tools, there is no reason you shouldn’t have an attractive website to promote your filmmaking endeavors and interests. Your demo reel, following the same parameters we have described, can be present on it, along with still photos of you, images from your work, behind-the-scenes images of you and your colleagues at work, your résumé, references, your blog, and links to your social media. (See Business Smarts: Build Your Online Platform, below.)

Social Media The website can also be an essential tool in helping build your audience. Assuming you use social media adeptly, you can easily drive people interested in you, your work, or the topics you cover to your site, where they can learn more about you and your filmmaking capabilities. So keep it updated, active, and attractive at all times—it is a public representation of you and what you want people to think about you.

Along those lines, when you make a film, enter a festival, win an award, get an internship, take photos at an event, network with someone interesting, and so on, promote these endeavors on Tumblr, Vine, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and elsewhere, and make sure you train yourself to use these and all other popular platforms to push out your messaging to people who follow you, your work, or the subjects you are interested in. The massive impact of social media cannot be overstated, and artists and filmmakers of all stripes—from the internationally famous to people just like you—now use it daily to promote their work and messages. You should use it routinely and, by doing so, as your career grows, so will a general familiarity with you and your work among your followers, who, as you now know, will eventually evolve into your audience.

image CRITIQUE REELS

Go online and seek out some readily available demo reels, or examine a classmate’s or a friend’s reel. Find one you think has potential or substance, and take some time to review it critically. Then, write down a formal critique of what you reviewed. What does the reel say about the individual’s personality and filmmaking abilities? Would you hire that person based on the work you see? What were the strongest areas of work, and the areas that need improvement? Offer some constructive feedback, and incorporate that feedback as you seek to create your own reel going forward.

From this course and the work you will pursue next, you will have the skills to create interesting and attractive work and get your message out—with or without traditional distribution. All you really need is the interest and determination to do so. If you have it, then now is the time to get started.

What are you waiting for?

Build Your Online Platform

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In Chapter 14, we touched on the importance of promoting a movie once it is made, and how online tools can serve that agenda. Earlier in this chapter, we emphasized the usefulness of incorporating web-based tools and social media into the foundation of the general promotional platform you will use to sell yourself and your work to prospective employers, collaborators, financiers, audiences, and followers. Indeed, this should be a living, organic, online platform that you use to sell yourself, beyond any single project. This is important not just because it is a good way to show off your creativity and filmmaking skills but also because it is simply good business. You can reach thousands of eyeballs with few, if any, marketing dollars to spend, no publicist, and little experience or contacts in the film world. The Internet, after all, is a unique and powerful tool that allows you to do creative and marketing work simultaneously, and distribute it widely with minimal resources.

Obviously, much of this involves mastering the delicate art of search engine optimization (SEO), so that your online materials can be easily searched for and located by people interested in you, your work, or the topics you are dealing with. (See the Tip we offer on effective SEO techniques.) But those SEO efforts won’t amount to much if you don’t have strategically effective material online to begin with. Here are some pointers regarding your online endeavors:

  • image Build an email mailing list. Collect and organize email addresses at every film-related event or activity you get involved with. On your website, invite people to sign up for emails, newsletters, or notifications from you for the strategic purpose of collecting their addresses, so that you can reach out to them when you have news about a film, a project, an event, or an activity.
  • image Build a sharp website and keep it up-to-date. Make sure you own your website name and register it. Ideally, your website URL should be your name if it is available, or some other easy-to-remember variation of your name. Take down old content, and put up your most recent work, contact information, blog postings, photos, links, and so on. Routinely check for and fix broken links, and although you might think it painfully obvious, spell-check and edit your grammar and style—make it look as if you know exactly what you are doing. After all, if you can’t spell, why would anyone think you can make a movie?
  • image Always present movie clips of some type that you either made or participated in making on your site—clips from your student or independent work, trailers, even tests or pieces of unfinished projects. Although prospective employers or people who might want to represent you might not have the time to spend all day on your site or click on endless links, they are interested in finding new talent. If they can immediately see some impressive work, they will want to dig deeper. Give them something that knocks their socks off as soon as they hit your site.
  • image Leverage content strategically onto Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Tumblr, and elsewhere. Social networking tools make it easy for you to move content from one platform to another, and to personalize it for each platform. Likewise, learn the art of using Twitter with short, succinct postings and effective hashtags, and how to take advantage of Twitter’s Vine app for creating short videos—you can easily post six-second teaser clips that can go viral and drive people to your site to check out your work.
  • image Start a blog, and update it weekly (or more often). This is not a blog to wax philosophical about the issues of the day; rather, it is a movie blog that features the aspects of filmmaking you care most about.
  • image Build separate promotional websites and social media pages for every movie you make. Make sure, as with any marketing materials, that you have a hook for them—a clear and simple way to make people interested in the movie up front, whether it is a provocative picture or clip, festival acceptance, reviewer quotes, box office or award data, or an outlandish technical or creative fact about how the movie was made or who stars in it. Then, work to strategically link that promotional site or page to your main site and other social media avenues.
  • image Religiously use the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and other online movie-credit-listing sites to list yourself, your credits, and all your current and past work, so that anyone searching for you in such venues will find you easily enough. IMDB and other sites are largely updated by the people listed themselves, or their representatives, and thus the accuracy of listings varies widely. Make sure any site that lists you as a filmmaker lists you accurately—don’t count on anyone else to do it for you.

Emergency Kit

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  • image An upbeat, positive attitude. When you’re looking for an internship or a job, the mental game is the most important game you play.
  • image Persistence. For many people, it can take 100 inquiries, interviews, and contacts before landing the first opportunity. If you feel depressed after 60 meetings, pick yourself up: you are more than halfway there!
  • image Your personal network. Who can help you get “inside”?
  • image Good manners. Always follow up, don’t be pushy, and send thank-you emails whenever someone meets with you. People remember such things.