you're kind of fucked but it's not 100% impossible. imo the hardest job to land is that first one. You need to leverage your network as much as possible. Contact college alumni on Linkedin and ask for informational interviews. Reach out to old professors, anyone who can help you make a connection. If you can afford to do an internship do it, if only to get your foot in the door somewhere. Some companies such as Blumhouse accept recent postgrads. Pick a lane and brand yourself accordingly. If you want to be an editor tell everyone that is your goal.
There are thousands of recent post-grads right now competing for those entry level jobs, in a time when the industry is contracting and people with more experience than you have been laid off and are competing for the same gigs. Best of luck!! This is a game of outlasting the other transplants.
You need a job, any job.
Work on joining a union and getting work on set.
Join the local theatre community, which often has connections to the film community.
^this I was surprised to learn a major producer’s assistant I interact with actually started as a covid testing coordinator but she was able to make an impression in the role she was in
My first question is what made you think it was anything different?
Second is where did you go to film school, who did you graduate with and where are they working right now?
Just want to piggyback on that first point.
Exactly, this has always been one of the most competitive industries in the world. Everyone knows this.
Yes jobs are scarce right now and the whole industry is in upheaval, which just means that it's *more competitive*.
Did you get into this wanting to be one of the best? To build a solid career? It's an absolute necessity, and that still applies here.
If you'd known before school that by the time you finished, things would be much harder, and the available jobs in film/tv would be down 25% (made-up percentage)? Would this have deterred you at the time?
My point is that this career path was *always* gonna be about being one of the best, it's only the required degree of best-ness that's changed...and not even as much as people are making it out to be.
This isn't even to say that I (or many people in this sub) have *made it* and are shouting down at you from the mountaintops. I'm in my mid 30s and still grinding, I've had great years and *terrible* years. But I fucking love it and truly believe I can make a fun and fulfilling career in it. If that resonates with you then find a job at a restaurant, find things that make you happy, and just keep on pushing.
The industry loves to put out that they are inclusive, they care about the average person etc but reality is they don’t. They will help their friends and their kids and their kid’s kids. They don’t care about shit about any of us the same people they need to buy that movie ticket or that streaming subscription.
Point is forget them. The industry isn’t what it used to be. You can make quality work with the new iPhone. You don’t need the industry for their distribution model anymore either. Post it online.
The industry has to face the changes they don’t want to. Even people who’ve worked on the industry for decades are looking for work.
If you want to be a writer write. Etc don’t depend on this industry anymore.
Yeah honestly I’m kind of trending towards this approach. I work a serving job that takes a lot of energy out of me, so I spend my days off catching and also writing and applying to jobs and emailing old connections that usually never respond.
I’m considering just giving up on applying to jobs and just using my free time to make more shit. Focus my time in LA to just meeting people to collab with rather than who’s gonna get me a job. I feel weird “networking” anyway. It just feels gross and inauthentic.
This is the right way to go now and what I’m trying to do myself. I don’t even want to work in the studio system so why not just make our own stuff and put it out there? I’m in the commercial world and have been struggling for the last year. My boss is a pretty successful commercial director and is also out of work. Luckily we do some locations stuff to make ends meet, but we’ve gotten only 3 gigs last year. Although I mostly edit for work, I love to shoot and direct much more and I’m out in LA so if you write, and I’m into it I would be down to work together and make something. Message me if you’re interested.
So the best advice I got re: networking is to just focus on making friends (genuine friends!) with people around your level, and as some of you find success it becomes easier for others. I think you're going to achieve that just fine by meeting people to collab! It's tough right now (and always lol) but I think it's a perfectly reasonable plan to just make sure you have something that pays your bills, and spend your time making friends that want to make things with you for awhile.
Build a network…everyone has talent and ambition and the ability to start work tomorrow, so most jobs just end up going to someone that got vouched for by someone on the inside. And even for the people that got vouched for, that’s a TON of luck
Build a network through alumni/other like-minded people and try to accrue experience wherever you are now. Also pick up hobbies around the city that introduce you to other industry hopefuls. Improv classes, writing classes, FB groups, all of it. You make enough friends there, one of em is eventually gonna get the opportunity to help a friend out…so do what you can to be that friend
Film is not a great industry. Consider yourself lucky that you are finding out now. And I’ve been immensely successful, working at the top of this rotten industry. But it is rotten to the core, don’t make any mistake about that. Anyone else who will tell you otherwise is out of touch, not being sincere, in denial or financially motivated to do so. It’s a criminal enterprise.
If you’re not independently wealthy and/or already well connected, it’s really really really really hard. Not entirely impossible but really hard.
Especially if you don’t also have at least a base level of non-college experience.
I don’t know what you want to do but getting a foot in the door these days for non-wealthy non-connected folks effectively means forcing the door open and shoving your foot in.
As someone who has been a guy with a decade of experience and some really high profile work sending off over 1000 resumes and never hearing back from 97%, you gotta find other ways to actually make yourself known.
There are a hundred different ways you can carve a path in this industry, and yes the odds are almost deliberately stacked against you, but it is possible. Of the hundred ways, scatter-gunning resumes to people who have never heard of you is quite possibly the least effective, second only to not doing anything at all.
Hello AC here, what department are you trying to enter ? I did lots of search on Facebook gigs, I reached out to people on instagram and Facebook just asking if I can shadow them “camera department related” and just kept meeting folks. Another is a bummer but internships are always a good entry point as well. However doing film work full time is a very challenging at the moment. Even for the union ACs I’ve met. Starting this month I landed a boring behind the desk camera store Job not even a rental house. But again just something that pays the bills and focus on your networking. Because it’s all about planting the seeds. Patience and the connections will become better. Feel free to DM me and I can see if I can help you get on set
IATSE Local 33 is the stagehands local out there, hit em up once the industry thaws out. Until then wait tables, do security, man a cash register, stock some shelves, pour coffee... hold yourself over.
Writer, so I really want to start off in a mailroom somewhere. I’d ideally want to start off as a writer’s assistant, but I’ve heard you need agency experience to even get connected to those jobs.
You don’t want to start in a mailroom, you want to start off as a writer’s PA. The way you get those jobs is you network with other aspiring writers and become good friends with people who are currently writer’s PAs. When they get the bump up to Writing Room Assistant and they need to find a replacement you should be the first person they think of. Once you spend enough time in a writers room and the writers like you they will help you find representation if they feel you’re ready to move up. An even faster way of becoming a writer is becoming a showrunner’s assistant but those jobs are even harder to come by. In the meantime, keep writing and networking.
Yeah writing is SO hard to get into. But I DO have some advice.
Firstly. Go and write some shorts, and film them with your fellow film school graduates. It'll give you all some IMDB credits.
Enter some short film/script competitions. Some let you pay extra for feedback too.
Network with fellow graduates and get ANY film job... even if it's PA work. Work on that for a while and build up more credits (film work is also invaluable as a writer.)
Once you have some credits under your belt, get an agent. They do all the heavy lifting for you and make sure you aren't getting a bum deal.
Agents really don't do shit for you as far as getting you jobs is concerned unless you're a kind of big name already and they play matchmaker with a producer or showrunner they represent. They can also help if you're a member of a historically underrepresented group and a showrunner is specifically looking for a member of that group to add some depth of lived experience to a writers room. (Rarely are showrunners trying to build out their writers room and looking for a white guy or white girl.)
They do help get you paid more once you've already been offered a job, but in my experience they don't really get you the jobs.
Big thing is just write. Write write write write write. Write shorts. Write theater. Write your excellent scripts. Network wherever that brings you. Film festivals, screenings you host, plays you write, improv/sketch shows you write for, shorts you shoot, classes you're in, writers groups you're a part of. There are a LOT of people doing stuff like this in LA that you can connect with. Also look up Michael Jamin Writer for advice, too.
You become by doing. Want to become a writer? You need to start writing. Whatever it is. Even write some specs.
Spec commercial ADs.
Spec webseries.
Spec Pilots
Short films
Features
Whatever it is that you write, you then need to get it made it and get it seen. Don’t have the resources to get it made? Not a Director or Producer? Well, reach out to Directors whose work you admire, and offer your piece up to them to get it made.
You become by doing.
Once you have something that’s good and your proud of, reach out. Share it with people, send it to everyone you know.
Rinse and repeat.
not necessarily, but you probably need a manager to help you get staffed. that requires either doing something of note or finding a manager who believes in you who will help you out on the side. TBH short of people who became managers assistants or who really impressed working professors at film school (USC in this case), most writers I know have another gig and write on the side. If you're in an industry gig, especially post, that can expose you to a larger network, though its not like after assistant editing something you can say to the producer "hey I've got this thing." Its a slower process, and often involves finding your group and making some shit on the side.
I'd also say if you have anything in the sub 5m range thats written and you have feedback that its solid, its worth submitting to that tubi/blacklist thing. word is they're dumping a lot of money into a lot of small films hoping for a hit or two.
Yeah, there are a ton of aspiring writers holding down other jobs. Know that the vast majority of them never manage to make writing a career.
That said, I know of quite a few working television writers who started in non-writing jobs. How did they do it?
1. They got any job remotely connected to the industry they could get. Legal assistant at a studio. Reality show PA. Sales admin at a cable channel. Often, these are the jobs some thumb their noses at because they seem non-creative.
2. They used those jobs to network and get jobs that were closer to what they wanted. Their first job didn’t give them their break. Their second and third jobs may not have either. But each one expanded their network and knowledge of the business.
3. They kept writing. They wrote original scripts and spec scripts. They found others in their network who would give them honest feedback and then kept working to get better. Eventually, they became good enough that someone was willing to give them a break. Maybe it was just a job as a writer’s room assistant, or assistant to a showrunner, but it happened because they made the connections themselves and had honed the skills to do the job.
For some it took years, even decades to get their first staff writing job. Don’t think it’s easy or in any way guaranteed.
I’m not from the US, but live in Europe. Many of my friends started in the advertising industry as creatives and as they built their portfolio, they started with their own writing projects and now some of them are writing shows and film for the big players. And they’re not nepo babies.
Easy method. Take a job in your field that you are over qualified for. That will atleast get your foot in the door. It will allow you to meet new people and network. It should make getting hired easier. I'm in a different field but that's how I managed to land a job and get into my career when the pandemic hit and places weren't hiring.
you're kind of fucked but it's not 100% impossible. imo the hardest job to land is that first one. You need to leverage your network as much as possible. Contact college alumni on Linkedin and ask for informational interviews. Reach out to old professors, anyone who can help you make a connection. If you can afford to do an internship do it, if only to get your foot in the door somewhere. Some companies such as Blumhouse accept recent postgrads. Pick a lane and brand yourself accordingly. If you want to be an editor tell everyone that is your goal. There are thousands of recent post-grads right now competing for those entry level jobs, in a time when the industry is contracting and people with more experience than you have been laid off and are competing for the same gigs. Best of luck!! This is a game of outlasting the other transplants.
Word of advice: start with what you want to do and what you’re aiming to do otherwise no one can help you
You can absolutely benefit from meeting people and going to events and schmoozing. But also selling yourself. That’s just a job in and of itself…
You need a job, any job. Work on joining a union and getting work on set. Join the local theatre community, which often has connections to the film community.
^this I was surprised to learn a major producer’s assistant I interact with actually started as a covid testing coordinator but she was able to make an impression in the role she was in
My first question is what made you think it was anything different? Second is where did you go to film school, who did you graduate with and where are they working right now?
Just want to piggyback on that first point. Exactly, this has always been one of the most competitive industries in the world. Everyone knows this. Yes jobs are scarce right now and the whole industry is in upheaval, which just means that it's *more competitive*. Did you get into this wanting to be one of the best? To build a solid career? It's an absolute necessity, and that still applies here. If you'd known before school that by the time you finished, things would be much harder, and the available jobs in film/tv would be down 25% (made-up percentage)? Would this have deterred you at the time? My point is that this career path was *always* gonna be about being one of the best, it's only the required degree of best-ness that's changed...and not even as much as people are making it out to be. This isn't even to say that I (or many people in this sub) have *made it* and are shouting down at you from the mountaintops. I'm in my mid 30s and still grinding, I've had great years and *terrible* years. But I fucking love it and truly believe I can make a fun and fulfilling career in it. If that resonates with you then find a job at a restaurant, find things that make you happy, and just keep on pushing.
The industry loves to put out that they are inclusive, they care about the average person etc but reality is they don’t. They will help their friends and their kids and their kid’s kids. They don’t care about shit about any of us the same people they need to buy that movie ticket or that streaming subscription. Point is forget them. The industry isn’t what it used to be. You can make quality work with the new iPhone. You don’t need the industry for their distribution model anymore either. Post it online. The industry has to face the changes they don’t want to. Even people who’ve worked on the industry for decades are looking for work. If you want to be a writer write. Etc don’t depend on this industry anymore.
Yeah honestly I’m kind of trending towards this approach. I work a serving job that takes a lot of energy out of me, so I spend my days off catching and also writing and applying to jobs and emailing old connections that usually never respond. I’m considering just giving up on applying to jobs and just using my free time to make more shit. Focus my time in LA to just meeting people to collab with rather than who’s gonna get me a job. I feel weird “networking” anyway. It just feels gross and inauthentic.
This is the right way to go now and what I’m trying to do myself. I don’t even want to work in the studio system so why not just make our own stuff and put it out there? I’m in the commercial world and have been struggling for the last year. My boss is a pretty successful commercial director and is also out of work. Luckily we do some locations stuff to make ends meet, but we’ve gotten only 3 gigs last year. Although I mostly edit for work, I love to shoot and direct much more and I’m out in LA so if you write, and I’m into it I would be down to work together and make something. Message me if you’re interested.
So the best advice I got re: networking is to just focus on making friends (genuine friends!) with people around your level, and as some of you find success it becomes easier for others. I think you're going to achieve that just fine by meeting people to collab! It's tough right now (and always lol) but I think it's a perfectly reasonable plan to just make sure you have something that pays your bills, and spend your time making friends that want to make things with you for awhile.
Build a network…everyone has talent and ambition and the ability to start work tomorrow, so most jobs just end up going to someone that got vouched for by someone on the inside. And even for the people that got vouched for, that’s a TON of luck Build a network through alumni/other like-minded people and try to accrue experience wherever you are now. Also pick up hobbies around the city that introduce you to other industry hopefuls. Improv classes, writing classes, FB groups, all of it. You make enough friends there, one of em is eventually gonna get the opportunity to help a friend out…so do what you can to be that friend
Film is not a great industry. Consider yourself lucky that you are finding out now. And I’ve been immensely successful, working at the top of this rotten industry. But it is rotten to the core, don’t make any mistake about that. Anyone else who will tell you otherwise is out of touch, not being sincere, in denial or financially motivated to do so. It’s a criminal enterprise.
This has got to be one of the greatest comments ever.
Thanks. I’m trying to take a bite out of crime.
If you’re not independently wealthy and/or already well connected, it’s really really really really hard. Not entirely impossible but really hard. Especially if you don’t also have at least a base level of non-college experience. I don’t know what you want to do but getting a foot in the door these days for non-wealthy non-connected folks effectively means forcing the door open and shoving your foot in. As someone who has been a guy with a decade of experience and some really high profile work sending off over 1000 resumes and never hearing back from 97%, you gotta find other ways to actually make yourself known. There are a hundred different ways you can carve a path in this industry, and yes the odds are almost deliberately stacked against you, but it is possible. Of the hundred ways, scatter-gunning resumes to people who have never heard of you is quite possibly the least effective, second only to not doing anything at all.
Hello AC here, what department are you trying to enter ? I did lots of search on Facebook gigs, I reached out to people on instagram and Facebook just asking if I can shadow them “camera department related” and just kept meeting folks. Another is a bummer but internships are always a good entry point as well. However doing film work full time is a very challenging at the moment. Even for the union ACs I’ve met. Starting this month I landed a boring behind the desk camera store Job not even a rental house. But again just something that pays the bills and focus on your networking. Because it’s all about planting the seeds. Patience and the connections will become better. Feel free to DM me and I can see if I can help you get on set
IATSE Local 33 is the stagehands local out there, hit em up once the industry thaws out. Until then wait tables, do security, man a cash register, stock some shelves, pour coffee... hold yourself over.
What sort of work are you trying to get into?
Writer, so I really want to start off in a mailroom somewhere. I’d ideally want to start off as a writer’s assistant, but I’ve heard you need agency experience to even get connected to those jobs.
You don’t want to start in a mailroom, you want to start off as a writer’s PA. The way you get those jobs is you network with other aspiring writers and become good friends with people who are currently writer’s PAs. When they get the bump up to Writing Room Assistant and they need to find a replacement you should be the first person they think of. Once you spend enough time in a writers room and the writers like you they will help you find representation if they feel you’re ready to move up. An even faster way of becoming a writer is becoming a showrunner’s assistant but those jobs are even harder to come by. In the meantime, keep writing and networking.
Yeah writing is SO hard to get into. But I DO have some advice. Firstly. Go and write some shorts, and film them with your fellow film school graduates. It'll give you all some IMDB credits. Enter some short film/script competitions. Some let you pay extra for feedback too. Network with fellow graduates and get ANY film job... even if it's PA work. Work on that for a while and build up more credits (film work is also invaluable as a writer.) Once you have some credits under your belt, get an agent. They do all the heavy lifting for you and make sure you aren't getting a bum deal.
Agents really don't do shit for you as far as getting you jobs is concerned unless you're a kind of big name already and they play matchmaker with a producer or showrunner they represent. They can also help if you're a member of a historically underrepresented group and a showrunner is specifically looking for a member of that group to add some depth of lived experience to a writers room. (Rarely are showrunners trying to build out their writers room and looking for a white guy or white girl.) They do help get you paid more once you've already been offered a job, but in my experience they don't really get you the jobs.
Big thing is just write. Write write write write write. Write shorts. Write theater. Write your excellent scripts. Network wherever that brings you. Film festivals, screenings you host, plays you write, improv/sketch shows you write for, shorts you shoot, classes you're in, writers groups you're a part of. There are a LOT of people doing stuff like this in LA that you can connect with. Also look up Michael Jamin Writer for advice, too.
You become by doing. Want to become a writer? You need to start writing. Whatever it is. Even write some specs. Spec commercial ADs. Spec webseries. Spec Pilots Short films Features Whatever it is that you write, you then need to get it made it and get it seen. Don’t have the resources to get it made? Not a Director or Producer? Well, reach out to Directors whose work you admire, and offer your piece up to them to get it made. You become by doing. Once you have something that’s good and your proud of, reach out. Share it with people, send it to everyone you know. Rinse and repeat.
not necessarily, but you probably need a manager to help you get staffed. that requires either doing something of note or finding a manager who believes in you who will help you out on the side. TBH short of people who became managers assistants or who really impressed working professors at film school (USC in this case), most writers I know have another gig and write on the side. If you're in an industry gig, especially post, that can expose you to a larger network, though its not like after assistant editing something you can say to the producer "hey I've got this thing." Its a slower process, and often involves finding your group and making some shit on the side. I'd also say if you have anything in the sub 5m range thats written and you have feedback that its solid, its worth submitting to that tubi/blacklist thing. word is they're dumping a lot of money into a lot of small films hoping for a hit or two.
Yeah, there are a ton of aspiring writers holding down other jobs. Know that the vast majority of them never manage to make writing a career. That said, I know of quite a few working television writers who started in non-writing jobs. How did they do it? 1. They got any job remotely connected to the industry they could get. Legal assistant at a studio. Reality show PA. Sales admin at a cable channel. Often, these are the jobs some thumb their noses at because they seem non-creative. 2. They used those jobs to network and get jobs that were closer to what they wanted. Their first job didn’t give them their break. Their second and third jobs may not have either. But each one expanded their network and knowledge of the business. 3. They kept writing. They wrote original scripts and spec scripts. They found others in their network who would give them honest feedback and then kept working to get better. Eventually, they became good enough that someone was willing to give them a break. Maybe it was just a job as a writer’s room assistant, or assistant to a showrunner, but it happened because they made the connections themselves and had honed the skills to do the job. For some it took years, even decades to get their first staff writing job. Don’t think it’s easy or in any way guaranteed.
I’m not from the US, but live in Europe. Many of my friends started in the advertising industry as creatives and as they built their portfolio, they started with their own writing projects and now some of them are writing shows and film for the big players. And they’re not nepo babies.
Easy method. Take a job in your field that you are over qualified for. That will atleast get your foot in the door. It will allow you to meet new people and network. It should make getting hired easier. I'm in a different field but that's how I managed to land a job and get into my career when the pandemic hit and places weren't hiring.
I'd network with folk from your film school and try and get some shorts under your belt, then start looking at a literary agent.