The Wrong Way to Network as a Filmmaker

as filmmakers we all know that getting your name out there is one of the most important things when it comes to getting paid work if people don't know who you are they just can't hire you it's as simple as that this makes networking one of the most important skills a filmmaker can develop because all networking really is is the art of getting your name out there and making new contacts if you do it well you can create all sorts of New Opportunities and new clients for yourself but if you do it badly then you can waste a ton of time with almost no results networking has been so important for me over the course of my career and without it I wouldn't have landed most of the big jobs I've had for Netflix Showtime or National Geographic or whoever and since starting this YouTube channel I've been on the receiving end of so many bad networking emails that I can confidently say a lot of you out there are doing this all wrong but don't stress that's exactly why I'm making this video I'm going to go over the common mistakes I see people making in their networking why they don't work and then I'm going to wrap up by giving you a better approach to networking the right way so you actually get results [Music] if any of you are new here or you haven't seen the last couple videos I'm still up in the Arctic which is why I'm sitting by this Frozen River I'm a full-time DP not a full-time YouTuber so for a little while still we're going to have to make do without the nice key lighting and acoustic paneling and all that okay but let's get into the video so before I dive into the most common networking mistakes and how to fix them let me just set the stage a little bit more on why networking matters one of the most common misconceptions out there in the film making World especially at the higher levels when you're being asked to shoot on bigger budget Productions is that somehow people are discovering you through Google searches or social media posts the truth is that unless you've won a bunch of high-profile Awards and are almost a household name at that professional level the majority of hiring is done through Word of Mouth a producer or director will be looking to fill a role on their next projects and for whatever reason their normal people can't do it when this happens they'll usually either reach out to to new people that they've had recent contact with or ask the people they work with regularly for recommendations now I'm not saying that Instagram posts or a real shared on Vimeo definitely won't get you any traction because maybe you'll go viral and some businesses or clients or whoever will see it and reach out sharing your work is important and it can pay off in a lot of ways but if you're hoping to get hired as the DP of a Netflix stock for example it isn't that likely to wake up to an unsolicited DM from the VP of production unless you already have a massive reputation for from being attached to award-winning projects or something I wish it was as simple as that to get on the right people's radar but it doesn't usually work out that way in my experience if I look back on all the biggest jobs I've had pretty much all of them came my way through recommendations from the same five or six people I got my first ever professional TV job because of a connection to a Mexican producer who suggested me when a National Geographic camera off broke his leg during a shoot when that shoot wrapped the lead DP then suggested me for dozens of other shoots over the next year or so both in Mexico and around the world on one of those shoots in Popa Guinea I met a producer who then suggested me for even more jobs including travel shoots in Africa and Latin America and even went on to finance my first feature of film that I shot and directed without wasting time going into every single person here it's enough to say that in my whole career which is included working on Emmy winning shows and shooting for Oscar nominated directors it's all really been built on making a good impression on probably about a dozen people it's a rarely talked about reality of the film making world that you don't need a 100 clients you just just need a few who come back to you again and again now you're probably thinking that's all well and good for you but how does that help me how do I get myself in a position to get that call when someone breaks their leg well it's pretty simple you need to identify people you want to work with and then meet them so that when someone does break their leg it's you they think of calling that means reaching out introducing yourself ideally meeting face to face and then making a good enough impression that they think of you next time easy enough in theory but in practice most people do this wrong as an example let me tell you how most people approach me and since starting this YouTube channel this is happening more and [Music] more I'll wake up one morning and open up my computer with a cup of coffee to find a brand new email from someone I've never met with the subject line I need your help or filmmaker needs advice or something like that when I open it there'll be maybe a couple paragraphs that say something along the lines of I just found your YouTube channel and I'm a new filmmaker trying to break into the industry I'm passionate about film making and based on your videos I can see that you are the perfect person to help me at this stage in my career here's a link to my real could you please give me some advice on how to get to where I want to be can you see why this won't work this is pretty much the template for 95% of the emails I get and they all center around me helping someone else get what they want for free on my time and while I love helping people and that's why I've been making these YouTube videos for over 2 years now and coming out to like frozen rivers on my own little a little bit of downtime to keep making them emails like this are incredibly frustrating for a few reasons firstly because I'm crazy busy between being a full-time DP and running this Channel and there's no way I can jump on an hourlong Zoom call or write out thoughtful responses with custom advice to 30 people a month just because they write me an email and secondly because I see how hungry people are to get off the ground and I just want to yell you're doing this all wrong this is never going to work so what's a better approach if you really want to network [Music] effectively well a serious upgrade over asking for free advice is the second most common type of email I get and that's writing to offer your services whatever they might be and proposing to work together sometimes even for free now working for free is a contentious topic online and there are some people who's going to say you should never do it I happen to disagree with that and my stance is that if you can learn or make good contacts then working for free is well worth it I still work for free even now and I've been doing this for over a decade but whether you're offering to work for free or if you're just introducing yourself as a potential paid collaborator down on the road even though this is a huge improvement over the normal help me because it would be good for me email there's still some problems with this approach for starters geography let's say you live in I don't know Italy and you're writing to a director who lives in La it's going to be quite rare for them to have the right project to hire you for not saying it's impossible and I personally keep a spreadsheet to keep track of all the people around the world who've expressed interest in working with me just in case the right opportunity comes up but most docs aren't going to have the kinds of budgets to fly crew in from all over the world as cool as that would be if you're just starting out on your journey you'd be better off approaching people in the major center closest to where you live than you would be in reaching out to someone in another country or Halfway Around the World to ask for a job the real problem with this approach though is that the people you're asking to work with don't know you and in the context of a traveling dock crew that's kind of a problem documentary teams are like small traveling families and often a person's character and their attitude in a stressful situation is important as their technical skills at the end of a crazy long day or for that 400 a.m. call time you want the person who's still in a good mood and making life easier not the technical genius who's grumpy because they didn't like dinner or the hotel isn't nice enough there's so much talent out there that for me anyways I try to build out my crew based on who I actually want to be spending time with not just who has the best resume so when you reach out to someone and offer to work with them well that's way way better than asking for free help and you should continue to do it because they don't know who you are and they have no sense of your person personality it makes it hard for them to imagine what it would be like to spend 15 hours with you in a minivan and while I hope I can start hiring more people off of that list I've been building it's still not the best way to network though it's far from the worst the best way to network hands down is to get yourself in front of the person or group of people that you want to work with and make a good impression as a human yes you still need to have a good portfolio and work samples but when people are looking to hire new crew the people they're going to to think of most are the ones they've already met that's why I think dedicated networking trips are one of the best investments you can make in your film making career even if they take a while to pay off so what does that look like well it's going to depend on where you live but I'll use myself as an example right now I live in Canada and before that I was based in Mexico City which means I spent most of my networking energy for the last few years on North American companies the epicenter of Doc production companies in North America is New York and also LA but I think New York edges it out so when I was working in Mexico as a cam op and DP and starting to move more and more into shooting full-time and taking bigger DP jobs I take one to two trips to New York a year that were focused only on booking as many meetings as I can I've made an entire networking guide before that you can download for free with more detailed instructions for something like this but basically I'd make a big list of all the companies I thought would be a good match for my skills then start emailing but instead of saying I want to work for you please hire me or even worse can you please get on a call with me and give me some tips I'd say I'm a documentary cinematographer based in Mexico City who shot for clients like x y and Zed go Canada I love the work your company did on Project whatever and because of my skill set I think I'd be a great fit I'm heading to New York in a couple of weeks for some meetings and I'd love to swing by your office for 15 minutes and introduce myself quickly let me know if you have a minute during whatever date range and I'll come to wherever is easiest for you obviously that's a basic version of the email I sent but you don't really need to say much more than that can you see how much easier this is for someone to work with than the other approaches if someone emails me and says I'm going to be in your city I'll come to a coffee shop near your place and all I want to do is introduce myself it's so much easier for me to take that meeting if the person has the right skills and I like their Vibe I'm much more likely to hire them than if I just gotten a random email now of course I understand that this is much harder than sending emails I can already hear people saying but I don't live in New York or even the US and it's expensive yeah it is when I did my first networking trips to New York I was so low on cash that I was about 4 weeks away from borrowing money from my mom to pay my rent in Mexico City but I knew that if I wanted to make things happen for myself I needed to invest and so I did it anyways I stayed in a flop house thing in Bushwick for 28 bucks a night with a shared bathroom in the hall I took the subway everywhere I ate the cheapest food and I stayed away from the bars and restaurants it was still expensive and a huge risk but one of the meetings I booked came back and a few weeks later they gave me a short video assignment which then turned into a much larger project that I shot for 45 days and which single-handedly saved me financially if I just sat in my apartment sending emails and complaining that no one was responding that never would have happened and this doesn't have to be in New York wherever you live there's going to be a production Center somewhere if you live in Southeast Asia for example that's probably bankco in Latin America that might be Mexico City or Rio in Europe maybe it's London or Paris in South Asia I'm guessing it's Mumbai or New Deli I don't really know your situation and everyone is different so it's kind of up to you to figure out where the people are you want to to work with and then find a way to meet them yeah I know this is much harder and costs a lot more than sending DMS from the couch but that's why it works you need to invest in your career both in terms of creating projects that showcase what you can do and also getting out into the world and meeting the people you want to work with so that they might actually hire you sending emails asking for advice is easy complaining that your career isn't where you want it to be because people don't answer them is also easy making things happen for yourself by saving money to shoot spec projects and then traveling wherever your Regional Hub is to meet people then waiting for 6 months or so for those meetings to pay off is hard very hard and that's why it works if this was easy then everyone on YouTube would have a great filmmaking career but if you're watching this then I'm guessing you know that's not the case and you're ready to roll up your sleeves and do what needs to be done now I know that everyone's reality is different your challenges and situation are going to vary hugely if you're from Bangladesh compared to Myanmar compared to Tokyo compared to Berlin this isn't about pretending that one size fits all or what worked for me will work for you exactly or even that the world is equal and fair because it's not as much as that sucks but no matter where you're from or what you're trying to accomplish you can't take the path of least resistance and think it's going to work and when it comes to networking this is just as true so there we go my take on why you're probably networking the wrong way and how to try and improve your approach moving forwards like I said you can grab the free guide uh to networking through the link in the description which is like 12 pages long and cover step byep how I'd approach a networking trip learning to do this the right way can be insanely helpful and can really help your career grow just like doing it wrong can make you feel terrible when no one responds and gets you nowhere so just save yourself a bunch of heartache and frustration and start networking like a pro see [Music] you hey

Channel: Luc Forsyth

Views: 71,824

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Id: Fdd28rp_lJ0

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023