Story Is Everything
I believe this is most important lesson any filmmaker can take away from film school. Despite all the technical and creative skills we learn, your content will be no more interesting than a demo reel if it’s story isn’t solid.
Focus on your story first, and use everything else to aid in telling your story.
Sound is more important than Vision.
In today’s world it has never been easier to make a film, with readily available information, training and access to gear people can literally make a film overnight and on close to a zero dollar budget.
This means that the amount of content being created is at an all time high and is only likely to increase massively, all this makes for a lot of content, and for a lot of noise to drown your work out. With so much content available it’s no wonder people’s attention spans are getting shorter.
People might forgive you for a dodgy picture, but sound is something that will turn anyone off a video very quickly.
Think back to when you were watching a video on YouTube with really bad sound, I can almost guarantee you hit the back button and went to another video.
When budgeting, planning or shooting your work, I think it’s very important to give sound equal if not more attention than vision.
It’s not about the gear!
We all know that one person that has all the equipment under the sun, but does this make them a better filmmaker? No. a bad workman blames his tools”, this a great quote and is a great way to remind us all.
File Management, Keep It Simple Stupid
Every minute you spend looking for something it is costing you, money and time.
I also feel you have the potential to Lose or accidentally destroy an asset when your file management is anything less than immaculate.
Everyone’s file management is different, they all work and for the most part are complex. For my file management, I try to keep things neat, informative and easily interpretable to anyone in the post workflow.
I think it’s important to remember that you won’t always be the only one working on a project and it’s likely someone somewhere in the post workflow will have never seen the content or its file management system.
Example: you may hire an editor who has never seen the project, or you might be handing off the edit to a colourist or sound designer.
It can be tough
It can be incredibly hard sometimes. our industry is fiercely competitive, and to survive you must be multi-skilled and constantly ready to adapt to changes in technology/trends.
