How bad of an idea is it to pursue filmmaking?

I want to make films/write/run tv shows for a living. I watch maybe 5-6 a week and generally read maybe one chapter of a film textbook a day + take photos in my spare time. Probably less than others do, and I know how hard it is to achieve, but is it possible?

I'm not looking for validation but I'm want to know if it's a complete waste of time or not. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. Only been at it for a year though. I'm 19 btw. Expecting it to take me 6 or 7 years to get a decent film made. Any advice? Thoughts?

I've had a few people tell me It's not for me. One person who worked in locations, and my best friends dad suggested maybe I should be a writer/editor, as he worked in the biz and thinks I'm too passive/timid to be a director. Guys probably the smartest person I've ever met, and he's usually right about things, even if he's an ass. I know I should be confident in my decisions, but if film doesn't pan out I've seriously been thinking of just offing myself (another problem in itself, Too much self loathing). Should I spend some more time working on myself first?

Sorry for the rambling post anons, I needed to vent

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no idea where you're from but i say pursue becoming an editor and if you work hard enough even if you don't make it into the the film industry itself there's always company's in big cities that require video editors that pay a decent wage. and you say you watch roughly 250 films a year which means you should have a decent knowledge of editing flow and rhythm. so yeah, keep watching and learning, work hard and be willing to eat shit and you'll be able to make a career of it.

Ive worked in the industry for the last 5 years. Only people who are extremely rich or extremely well connected get to write AND direct 99% of the time.

If you want to be that 1% you better be god tier statted in charisma, business sense, hard work, high aptitude and luck.

That said, there are a shit ton of jobs that aren't directing. Im a 2nd Assistant camera and I really enjoy it. Just make sure you move to LA, NYC or maybe Atlanta if you want to have a real career. Dont even bother in a smaller city

I think you know what the answer is already.

Just think about it completely objectively like a gambler would.
tip: The longer you evade reality, the further behind you will be when you realize your not special.

Where do you live? If you live in places that has many show biz jobs it would be much more convenient for you.

Good luck mate, Sup Forums is a comfy board

Being an editor definitely seems to be the best way to go about things. First choice would be writing though desu.

>extremely rich and extremely well connected

Would you say most of the popular auteurs fit into this category, or are any of them exceptions? (PTA, Fincher, Wes Anderson,)

I'm an introvert desu, but I loosen up once I get to know people. I do have the ability to 'quietly lead'. Ok buisness sense (dice roll with that one), and I've shown some aptitude in creative areas. Not incredibly charismatic but I've been told I'm incredibly approachable as a person.

So I'm kinda fucked stats-wise I guess. My understanding/aptitude for film is alright though. Like 7/10 for where I am in life.

Directing/writing do interest me the most, but I'd rather be a novelist or game designer or something if those don't work out.

Objectively, I look at myself and think I have a good chance at succeeding, if I have conviction. A friend told me when he was drunk he actually thought I could make award-winning films, contary to his own previous doubt

So I say it's iffy for me. If I make myself a slave to improving my craft there's like an 8/10 chance I will succeed and become good. But there's a lot of personal issues that haunt me and those could take years to go away or be fixed, so my progress right now is quite slow. I live in Vancouver, been thinking of pursuing being a production assistant but I need to learn how to drive and get the certifications/ a car first.

>A friend told me when he was drunk he actually thought I could make award-winning films
well in that case

Look man, a life in the arts is basically a life of struggle until you make it, and you're not guaranteed to make it. If you wanna work dead end jobs to have the free time to hone your craft then go for it, but otherwise, it's best to keep that as a hobby and pursue something more practical.

Vancouver bc or WA? BC is one of the best cities to work in, I just assumed you were American.

And to answer your question, yes, PTA (dad hooked him up with his first jobs and actors for his first film), Wes (rich) and Fincher (rich, AFI student) were all very well off and very connected.

You are gambling your whole life by wanting to become a writer/director. I HIGHLY reccomend you work for a PA for a year and see if you can stomach the 16 hour days and life on set. If not, get the fuck out and never look back because its not for you.

Yeah you need to have a damn reliable car and need to be a really good and efficient driver to be a PA. You also have to know the city you are driving in like the back of your hand.

Honestly friendo, you dont seem very well cut out to work on set from what you've described. Maybe get an office PA job in a writers room and try to become a writer or the same with editing. You have to be an ubermensch to succed on set, I tell you hwhat

>And to answer your question, yes, PTA (dad hooked him up with his first jobs and actors for his first film), Wes (rich) and Fincher (rich, AFI student) were all very well off and very connected.
not to mention that these guys all started during the indie/spec boom of the '90s. those doors are pretty much all closed today

I feel you, user. I've wanted to be an actor all my life...I've been performing and doing drama since elementary school. Unfortunately I have such low self esteem that I jist don't think it's possible. I have no connections, I'm butt ugly, I'm not rich, and I have no god-given real talent. I only have passion. I think about killing myself knowing I will never be able to live my dream and feel that satisfaction. I don't know what to do.

This

Its actually one of the hardest times in history to become a successful writer/director. And I'm not even talking about with movies either. All the way down to reality tv and commercials. Theres a ridiculous amount of gatekeeping and nepotism is running unprecedntedly wild.

>Are you Jewish?
>Are you rich?
>Are you a prodigy-tier talent?
If you can't answer "yes" to at least one of those, don't bother.

The only bad idea is the idea that you should pursue money and not what you love. For Gods sake, don't ask Sup Forums for advice on this matter, people here are autistic shut-ins whose idea of high art is an anime series. People here would tell you to pursue STEM, and only STEM, and if you don't pursue STEM you should kill yourself, but why? Do they care about the advancement of mankind to the stars and expanding our lives? No, they just think STEM makes big money, and when they make big money they can finally win over the popular girls from high school. Seriously, if you want to make movies, then do it. Get off this website and do it. Every second you stay here you are plagued more and more with doubt, simultaneous self-pity and self-loathing, dragging you down and deeper into this pit of despair, and every second it's harder to climb out of. I'm begging you on my hands and knees, for the love of God, or Allah, or anything holy you believe in, or your own ego if you believe in nothing, please, it would be my dying wish for you to leave this website forever, live in the real world and make movies and be happy.

I have connections, am handsome as fuck, super rich and talented, but have no passion. huh

Most jobs will be gone within 20 years anyway due to AI. By then we'll probably be socialist. Socialism is the only viable long-term economic system at this time.

Find people with the same interests and make your own movies. That's what I'm gonna start doing next year. I'm near Atlanta so I can be an extra in a shit ton of movies and meet more actors to work with. My little sister goes to college and a few of her friends are also getting into film and want to shoot some indie shit. I felt the same way, just wanting to give up because "I may never be famous". But now I'm just like fuck it, why not go for it? I'd rather try than continue wasting my time. I don't know your life situation, user, but I wish you luck.

This is a beautiful post.

yes tell yourself that. make sure you become a neet and continue to tell yourself this every day so you don't kill yourself after giving up finding a job. I'm sure the government will give you free money eventually, no need to start a career nope

if youve ever watched reddit & memey you'll know that life is a meaningless struggle full of pain. If you aren't spending as much of that time doing what you really want to do as possible, then you're a huge pussy and a different sperm should have fertilized the egg

Singularity is expected around 2040. There's no doubt that we'll have to implement socialism in some fashion to continue as a society.

Did you read that on reddit? I love reddit, they've never mislead me before.

Flying cars, moon colonies and robot servants were expected by 2000

yeah. no one's gonna take a chance on your two-bit true romance/drugstore cowboy ripoff; in fact, no one's gonna take any chances at all. there's a reason we're not hearing anything about "prestige cinema" like we're constantly getting about its tv counterpart. with today's inflated budgets, test screenings, promotional/advertising difficulties, harsh ideological lines and the need to slice through an ever-growing din of relentless information, films have to be more obvious and streamlined than they have been in a hundred years. the art form isn't exactly in rude health, at least not in america

The only way you're getting into Hollywood these days is if you're related to someone.
Otherwise, you have zero chance in making it.
It's a rigged system. Don't bother. If you want to do it for fun, go ahead, but don't think it'll amount to anything without the machine behind you.

First things first OP, if you live in a flyover state you're fucked.
Go to Los Angeles, New York, or Toronto if you're serious about breaking into the industry.
Atlanta is a good city with a strong film industry as well, and the cost of living is much cheaper there than LA,NY, or Toronto.
I guess Savannah Georgia would be okay as well if you wanted to work with college students on their indie films.

BC. I've read up a lot on the early careers of the three and they all seemed to have their own fair share of difficulties/ work required getting started. I know Fincher worked his way up from PA'ing all the way to directing music videos and eventaully Alien 3

We were talking about a film when we were watching and he was trying to talk me out of film at that point. The only reason I could tell it was a genuine reaction was because we were drunk

You're right,I'll quit tomorrow. mostly hang around the /adv/ and Sup Forums boards anyways. Thanks man :)

I'm ready for the struggle.

I think I'm going to go for it and you should too. There's plenty of ugly actors desu and if you earn acclaim for your roles you can make something out of it. I can't dream of doing anything else myself. What have you got to lose? I genuinely wish you the best, and hope you find the courage within yourself to risk the failiure and try

There's tens of thousands of people who want to do this and maybe 100-200 directors active in Hollywood at any one time, depending on whether or not you count TV directing as directing.


Good luck!

if you really want to be something you will be able to make it happen *eventually*
-work on being more assertive
-work hard and dont lose sight of major goal
-figure out a basic plan in your head
-research + talk to people in the business

of course its going to be hard hard work but if youre truly set on this path youll make it *eventually* (by this i mean expect it to take longer than you think by years unless you get lucky)

Honestly I've known a lot of people who tried this is no one came anywhere close to making it even if they went to a great film school and had some modest connections. The only ones I know who made it had a fuckton of family and friend connections because they grew up in an exremely small insular social circle and were also independently wealthy from inheritance so they could fail over and over, and they also went to only the very top film schools.

The problem with saying "do what you love" is it won't pay so be sure you know how you will realistically eat and not be homeless.

Honestly even shit like film editing is a hard gig, it's competitive as fuck in a lot of places, freelancing is a very tough gig because you've got to sell yourself 24/7 and being an extreme extrovert, attractive, connected, charismatic is a huge advantage for freelancers. Also extreme instability.

That said doing something like camera work or video editing is possible, just very hard. While wanting to be a filmmaker is the same as wanting to win the lottery if you were not born into that world. It has happened like people have won the lottery but you can't count on it.

If you want to actually make money writing, look into copywriting. It is competitive and hard but you can make good money and see your writing turned into commercials which are like mini films if you're lucky. Shitty thing there is the short shelf life of a copywriter so having an exit strategy is important, some agencies think you're too old at 30 or earlier, so transition into something else at that age.

i guess though, making it at all in showbiz is lucky from the get go, but remember that luck is when opportunity meets preparation...

Fincher also came from a rich family with jewish connection and is an AFI grad. If you dont know about AFI yet look it up. It costs $100000 a year, they only accept around 15 students, and theres no guarantee youll even get to go to your second year. Also its hard as fuck to get into unless you know someone.

Someone who's not prepared or skilled but has connections is hundreds of times more likely to make it then someone prepared and skilled with no connections, though. So before seriously trying this the single most important wuestion to ask yourself is if you can make those connections or have them. Otherwise it's a huge crapshoot except in the sense anyone can make a movie and put it on YouTube (I mean it's a crapshoot if you ever want to get paid).

I know a guy from my church who left his sketches out on the table and when the cable guy came over, he saw them and thought they were good so he told them to submit them to a Simpson's competition where they were looking for artists. He got the gig, did some episodes and the movie, then ended up winning an Emmy. He has traveled the world, is super attractive and is engaged to a brazilian model. It's all luck, man.

reason people advocate stem is usually because it's just a safer career option. there are so many talented singers or actors that never make it because of shit luck while other retards only make it because of connections or looks. it's not like after getting an engineering degree you automatically get a job but it's a lot easier to get one than get a proper role in a film

This is the best post in the thread. You need to swallow this red pill now OP. If you insist on doing it, PA and then move into a department while trying to write/direct on the side.

But know this. If you follow this dream you are gambling away your one lige on ridiculously low odds. Lets say you spend your life chasing this dream, working in the industry until youre 35, and you still havent gotten a break. Youre going to look around and everyone youve ever met your age will have families, saving, homes. And what will you have?

An industry resume or maybe a reel. You wont have any savings, youll have to spend all of your money funding indie features thag no one will watch. You probably wont be married. How can you have a family when all your free time goes into writing and directing. You definitely wont have a home. Not a nice one anyway.

Youll be fifteen years behind everyone you know with nothing to show for it, all because you had to be a child and gamble your life away on a dream.

In the end, will it be worth it. I guess thats for you to decide

I just think it's irresponsible not to have a plan for what you're going to do when it doesn't work out that's all. Since it won't 99,999 times out of 100,000 and you'll have to live the rest of your life and whther it works out is mostly out of your control. So there's nothing wrong with trying just know what you will do with the rest of your life and how you will survive.

bump interesting thread for once

even though i feel like this post is really pessimistic it is something to consider. be prepared for failure. but in a way, taking a safer option is still a loss, albeit a calculated one.

ultimately you have to decide for yourself if you can do it.

Noted, I've done some of this stuff already and will work on the rest.

I'm too much of a poorfag to go to AFI or any of the top schools. There's a chance I could get in but I wouldn't be able to win a scholarship or anything. I did see a guy though on reddit post some stuff, who said he got accepted to the program, and it was suprisingly not as great as I thought.

I don't have a plan because I can't see myself doing anything other than film or writing in my life. I'm genuinely willing to bet my life on it. Most things in my life before I found my passion for film were uninteresting and lifeless.

It's a shit truth about me but I dont' know what else to say :/

Yeah I can handle pessimism, and the guy has a point. I'm prepared for absolute faliure, especially if I don't put in the effort. I think I can pull it off though.

just to brighten the mood a bit: there is, of course, a way to make movies without the involvement of "the industry", or at least keeping them from compromising too much of your vision, but it takes patience, an almost inhuman drive and most likely luck as well

pic related is anna biller, california based director. last year she came out with a terrific movie called the love witch, a real labor of love (no pun intended). she wrote it, directed it, made the music, the costumes and the production design and so on. all meticulously staged, blocked, delivered, filmed and done in a style of her own. it looks like a million dollars, no student film vimeo shit. all in all it took her seven years, but she ended up with a far more interesting movie than anything i've seen from america in quite a while

If you really want to actually do writing or filmmaking outside of personal labor of love projects you should get into advertising.

I feel exactly like you, but I'm going into acting. We both know it's a stretch and more likely for people like us to never make it, but why think about that? I know I'm not gonna stop until I get what I want out of the way, no matter what. I wish you luck and hope to see you at the top one day, user.

It's worth mentioning that a more successful strategy these days may be having a well paying day job and then financing your project yourself. I have known people who self published something or launched a project themselves who eventually were able to switch to living on that. Meanwhile every person I know who banked on "the industry" wound up not getting to actually do or make much of anything and now either try to work enough minumum wage jobs to survive or otherwise scrounge by while people who got engineering degrees used those jobs to actually make their dreams a reality themselves.

explain tarantino then, he came from nothing, are you telling me a guy like that is a master at networking?

Here, read this: pastebin.com/kG0gRmTZ

different times, immense luck, once-in-a-generation talent

pick as many as you wish

Actually yes and that's just from skimming the wiki.

An average person can't expect to follow the same footsteps as a genius with the same results.

>QT a genius
His first two movies were reservoir dogs and pulp fiction, he fucking had something going very early on.

Not really an advice, because I'm at a similar page. I love films and wanted to get into film school since the second year in high school, the thing is, I'm from a third world shit hole (Brasil), and if this stuff is a lottery for you guys in the North America, I guess the chances here are close to zero, not be successful, I would say even make a living is really hard.

Would i be interested in investing my adulthood in hard work on this area that i don't even know if i will like it? No at all, doesn't matter how much i know about film making, one thing is watch films and read about making them, other thing is actually working on them.

When younger i even had insane dreams of changing the cinema of my country, be famous, only now with things in perceptive i see that the art form of cinema is nothing to everybody else outside my bubble, it won't change anything, it won't make me famous, it is bullshit and it was always dead in this part of the map. The thing is that i still love films, so what can i do?

Well, before cinema happened to me i had standards plans to do some low tier engineering to make living pretty lo fi (i kind like math since always), which is what the majority do over here, or change that to med school and law school. Fortunately i could not get into film school (was really close), so i end up doing civil engineering.

Right now i'm in the middle of my graduation and i could not made a better decision, i still love films and it is my second life, when i'm not in the university, which is not too hard and it's good because gives me a purpose (i get a little depressed without it). I keep writing my stuff, taking my pictures, reading about it, watching incessantly films from everywhere and i do have plans do make films, but not for living, just to use the language of cinema to deliver some messages that i think i have to deliver.

cont.

That's good to hear that you kept going with it. Good luck out there, man.

I even got an old friend that was really close since always and he got me into cinema and managed to enter into a film school (the process here is very different, i'm talking about public institutions, which are very few). His plan B was also engineering and the only one that can tell if he made a good decision is the guy, but from what a see as a outsider is that his graduation is not very different from mine and i would get really disappointed in his shoes.

Not only my university is better but also major courses like engineering have much more infrastructure and investments than cinema. Just that would have let me down, because i saw the things they do over there, and i see student films barely no budget that i could make, i see a majority going to cinema for lacking of options even if they didin't watched 100 films before, i see a majority using courses in the area of humanities to disseminate leftist propaganda, and that is it.

Other than that the graduation is much in the format of 1.Watching a bunch of stuff (forced, not by your choice) 2.Writing a lot of boring and repetitive stuff (not creative at all) 3. Study a lot to pass on dumb tests by professors who do not give a shit. Yep, there is some cool time on a film set to help a short being filmed, good moments really making creative stuff, but it is the absolute minority.

I probably would start to dislike cinema if put in this background, it's similar to mine, but for me i can do my stuff by side that gives me pleasure and hope about what can and should do.

Just go for it dude who gives a shit if it's really what you want to do you wouldn't let anyone stop you. It's hard as nails but for sure not impossible, even if you just become a full time editor/writer or whatever in the industry that's not being an auteur, you can be making money working in your industry and set aside money to produce your own films independently and send them through the festival circuit or whatever it is you'd like to do with your films

One in a million luck does actually happen one in a million times. It's just we're biased to want to believe no matter how tiny that percentage we'll be in it when we probably won't be. Some of these things were also easier in the past.

I remember looking at films or acting or reading books and thinking, "These are shit, I could do that!" Then I started researching and saw how often the person's parents were industry bigwigs or just one was a wealthy CEO and I realized no, I can't do that. People aren't honest about what a huge role family plays in America at all.

shit, i got lost in words, you get the conclusion you want from what i said, but what i want to say is that kepping film as a side project (not hobby) is worth living and not so bad as it may seems.

you would be surprise from the amount of people that are really interesed in cinema (and maybe will help you making a short film) but are not working/living around the area.

anyway, thanks for stoping to read.

YES! This realization is absolutely soul crushing, film ins't a middle/low class medium not matter how good or motivated you are. For me it even takes away the glow from a lot of works that revolve around the struggle of poor people or people that come from down and managed to go up.

>Singularity is expected around 2040
>science still can't explain consciousness and thought
>computer data still represented in bits, quantum computers with qubits, while the brain uses nothing we can understand
Sure.

I'm a filmmaker working on my first feature OP. It stars Gregg Turkington from On Cinema and we raised $1 million to make it. I'll tell you how it works in the real world.

I've found that, if you want a shot at writing/directing big films with high production values, you should first spend your own money on shorts. And I mean big money. If you aren't going to college, spend $30,000 on two short films instead. That's what I did. And I had to max out credit cards and ask for favors constantly to make it happen.

My second short got into Sundance because a friend of a friend knew a Sundance programmer (and he ended up liking the film obviously). So my recommendation is, make a few solid, high production value short films (if they don't look as good as your average film in theaters don't bother) and find someone who knows a Sundance programmer, or alternately, find a Sundance programmer yourself and just ask him to watch your fucking movie directly. It has to be not only good, but professional looking too.

Don't read shit like "Rebel Without a Crew". Don't make films with DSLRs and a few friends. Don't make YouTube comedy videos. Do NOT spend all your money on useless gear. Write a good script and hire a professional crew to execute it properly, then either get into Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Tribeca, or Toronto. It worked for me and it can work for you too if you work smart (not hard).

I know this is easier said than done, but if you have a decent script and some REAL money to hire crew/actors it's not as impossible as you'd think. Xavier Dolan got his first film into Cannes at 19 for fuck's sake. It's all about execution, and if you have enough crew, there's a much bigger chance they'll execute your ideas properly. No one gets anywhere making shit in their backyard.

I should also add that my first short film got me a decent amount of exposure because I marketed the fuck out of it.

First of all, it has to be good, but just throwing your short film on YouTube or Vimeo with no marketing won't get you anywhere even if it's incredible. What I did was, I bought 4000 upvotes on the "Videos" section on Reddit, I bought 1,000,000 YouTube views for $1000 dollars, and I spent about $2500 to get articles posted on NoFilmSchool and a few other similar indie sites. Then the world did the rest for me and the film now has 6 million YT views.

Basically, assuming your work is good to begin with, you just have to cheat and bullshit your way to the top. It worked for me. That first film didn't lead to anything specific but it gained me some connections that are incredibly invaluable. I wouldn't be making this feature if my first short wasn't so successful.

post your stuff

If this is true I'm kind of pissed off honestly. You shouldn't have to buy your way into the film industry. But I guess that's just the way it works.

>I'm a filmmaker working on my first feature OP. It stars Gregg Turkington from On Cinema
once your film comes out consider yourself doxxed kiddo

Have you ever looked into what directors/writers/editors do? They may be right that being an editor or writer in the mean time would be better for you right now. I would also say do anything to get your foot in the door. That may also be just unpaid internship at a local studio. It gives you early experience, and possibly some connections

One more thing, I'd like to clarify how I actually got from point A to point B (getting the feature film funded).

The way it happened was, I'd already made contact with the production company Factory 25 in NYC after my first short film went "viral" (which was somewhat manufactured obviously). They said they'd like to see more work from me first but they'd be interested in developing a feature with me eventually.

So basically, after I made my Sundance film I contacted them again and they were far more eager to fund the project. So they invested $250,000 and the rest came from grants and private investors.

Well shit man, thanks for the input and advice. How old are you? How long have you been at it? Good luck on your film btw. I'll definitely take the advice and make a few of my own good short films.

How come you still haven't shown any proof of your movie?

I relate to you in several aspects because I also live in Brazil and I also know I have zero chance of making it here as a filmmaker, but I instead turned my sights to other alternatives. I'm moving away from Brazil.
I have a steady job and I'll begin shooting videos for the company I work in. I do not have a camera yet but I have saved enough money to buy one at the end of this month.
The plan I've been following for the past 3 years and intend to continue pursuing is
>study as much about film as I can
>learn how to edit
>take a trip to England or California to visit their film schools and learn personally what to expect
>finish school
>create my own film and video production company
>get into a Brazilian film school to learn more
>build up a following on YouTube
>move to England or California once I have enough money and I'm 21 years old
>enroll in one of their film schools for the sake of attaining contacts and try to build my career from there
So far I'm at stage 4 and I might be able to attain a discount for the Brazilian film school I selected. I went to England (partially due to an user's recommendation) and I quite liked some of their schools.

You say that you have been through a period where you were young and full of dreams and that now you moved to civil engineering and put films as a secondary activity.
I want to ask you what do you think about my situation because I'm still young and full of delusional dreams that me and my family have invested a lot of time in.
Do you think I'll be wasting my time in going to a Brazilian film school ?
I'd like to ask someone who presumably has had more experience with this than I had to point out any problems or holes in my plans so I can correct them.

E eu nunca consigo conversar sobre isso com nenhum BR.

I'm a showrunner. My advice would be to move to LA. Much easier to accomplice if you live here. Much harder from any other city.

I'll be 28 in November man. I've been making shit for probably 15 years honestly.

Good luck. Just make sure you don't spend any money until your script is polished as fuck and you have a very wide knowledge of the film industry. I'd recommend watching like 5 films a day, reading any interviews you can find, listen to a bunch of commentaries, etc. Suck up all the information you can and write something truly great before you invest any money in shorts.

I think we both know why. Once the film is finished and out the door I'll probably feel differently about it though.

First, you have to increase your self-respect and self-worth as you seem pretty timid and weak. Secondly, you should talk about it with your friend who is in the industry all ready. he would know better than most people here.

im probably wasting my time writing this post but watever got nothing else to do right now. ok look, you are 19 years old and at that age people have a very romantic view of the world. I know because I did too. But 99% of the time their grand plans dont work out, and then they have to pick up the pieces and get a normal job. Also you are not going to off yourself. Thinking like, "If I fail I will off myself anyway so I have nothing to lose" is a coping mechanism. its very hard to actually commit suicide.

I know all this because I was exactly like you at 19. My advice is get into college and get a degree that leads to a normal job. If you want to do filmmaking do it on the side. Don't bank on it.

Ah, You've spent a lot more time on it than I have. Only been watching films for a little over a year now. I do try to suck up as much info as I can. I watch a lot of directors commentary.

5 films a day though, damn. Now I know how people get so much stuff watched on letterboxed! I don't know how to get above 7 a week, I feel if I watch more I don't really absorb the films.

Can I ask what your path was like getting there? Any other tips? Thanks a bunch.

Making your own shit and selling it is really the only way I've seen most "normal" people actually "make it." But, as you're saying, it can require a huge initial capitial investment, like most businesses. Production costs that could be tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Marketing budget. Marketing strategy. Like any entrepreneurial venture for a product. But this is the only thing I see that works out for a lot of average Joes.

The only real advice I can give you is to make good work, market it properly, and meet people who know people who can help you. That's basically what it all boils down to.

5 films a day is a bit of a stretch to be fair but the point is, make film your JOB and not your hobby (even if you aren't making money at it). If you aren't spending 10+ hours every day living and breathing film you aren't going to make it.

Everybody's "path" is different but I came from a poor family with not many connections so if I can do it, you probably have a good chance too man.

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