The Barriers Keep Lifting

If you’ve been to university, you may be familiar with wondering how and why you’re taking a course for skills you’ll never deploy in the “real world”. It was a common and – now – justified feeling for me, considering that I went to school for a totally different field than the one I work in.

There is no accreditation I can pull up to prove that I am a professional working in this field. None. I learned video production and filmmaking from online classes, blogs, and a great deal of YouTube.

Does it show? Sometimes.

I am so grateful for the multitude of knowledge real working professionals have shared online. Academy and BAFTA award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has shot many of my favourite films, goes out of his way to answer aspiring scrubs’ questions on his forum. Channels like Film Riot, D4Darious, wolfcrow, Danny Gevirtz, This Guy Edits, and many others were invaluable resources that each taught a multifaceted approach to writing, shooting, and editing. There are whole programs now, such as Shane Hurlbut’s Filmmakers Academy that endeavour to fully replace film school with self-paced online learning.

This is the democratization of the process. Making it accessible for anyone to learn.

There are some more obscure tricks I am not aware of, but I would happily trade a mountain of student debt for their loss. However, the advantages of being self-taught is the flexibility to approach a problem in ways that a standard mill in-the-box filmmaker won’t think of. Traditional production roles are very defined, leading to people becoming masters of their trade. However, this specialization can also create a single-mindedness in developing solutions to problems. Even the most seasoned Director of Photography will likely spend extra time removing a distracting element in the frame in-camera even if it would be the simplest visual effect to remove it in post. Without a thorough knowledge of what a VFX artist, editor, or sound designer do, the dedicated DP will seek to tell the story visually in camera and relies on their director to bring those departments together to decide how to tell the story. If you have some experience in all those roles, however, the simplest solutions come quicker, and are easier to execute without communicatory challenges between different people. Perhaps they won’t be as elegant, or executed as masterfully, but will likely be more efficient.

The gear, also, has become remarkably accessible. It is no longer the limiting factor, as the prohibitive costs of film and earlier video was. My favourite quote by David Fincher is “it’s all about taste; equipment is easy…get an iPad…someone you know has an iPad. Go make your movie. You can write on it, you can email the script to your friends, get them to show up at the same place, you can film with it, edit with it; there’s no excuse”. When I was just starting, I breathed Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I longed for the newest, best piece of equipment, clinging to the hope that it would make my shoddy work better. It never did, despite spending more than I had on cameras, lenses, lighting, and sound. I had no grasp of story, which no amount of gear was going to fix. This led to a lot of sitting around waiting to be good enough to create something, rather than making it happen.

In fact, you don’t even need gear. With a decent computer, you can make your whole video in Blender, alone.

If there is one thing I hope you get from this, it’s that you can do it. Neither gear, nor people, nor lack of funds and schooling can stop you. The knowledge is out there. You bring the inspiration, dedication, and point of view.

CV