How People Actually Become Videographers
Episode 10 of 10
The route in, from someone who hires for it. Less about gear than anybody expects.
More on this: film crew services in San Francisco.
Transcript
We hire freelance crew constantly, and the people we call back are almost never the ones with the best gear. So if you’re trying to get into this, this is what it looks like from our side of the booking.
The technical part is real and it’s also the smallest hurdle. Exposure, focus, audio, how to light a face so it doesn’t look like a hostage video. You can learn that, and everybody eventually does. It stops being a differentiator about a year in.
What doesn’t stop mattering is whether you’re easy to have on set.
Do you turn up early. Do you know when to speak and when not to. Can you take a note without defending your choice. Do you solve the small problem in front of you rather than waiting to be told. That’s what we talk about after a shoot, and it decides whether your name comes up for the next one.
On getting the first jobs. Nearly all of this industry runs on who knows you, which sounds discouraging and isn’t, because it’s the one part fully in your control. Be around. Take the assistant job that’s beneath what you can do. Be the person a grip house recommends because you were straightforward to deal with.
On the technical side, the thing worth getting genuinely good at early is audio, and it’s the one most people leave until last. Bad picture reads as a style choice. Bad audio reads as amateur, and there’s no fixing it afterwards. If you learn one thing properly before you learn anything else, learn how to get clean sound in a room you didn’t choose.
The second is lighting a face. Not lighting in general, faces. Almost everything you’ll get hired for early is somebody talking, and the difference between a competent interview setup and a bad one is almost entirely in whether the person looks like themselves.
And a note on reels, because everyone builds theirs wrong. A short reel of work at one standard beats a long reel that includes everything you’ve shot. Whoever’s watching stops at the weakest thing in it, and they’re deciding whether to trust you with a day they can’t repeat. Cut the piece you’re fondest of if it isn’t as good as the rest.
On specialising. Solo shooters usually end up with a niche, whether they planned one or not. Weddings, documentary, corporate interviews. Be deliberate about which one, because your reel decides what you get offered and what you get offered decides your reel. We’ve watched that loop close on people faster than they expected.
One thing nobody warns you about is how much of the job is other people’s stress. A shoot day usually matters to somebody, and it’s often the biggest thing on their calendar that quarter. Being the calm person in the room is a real skill and it’s undervalued, partly because it’s invisible when it works. The crew who get rebooked are usually the ones who made the day feel under control, whatever was happening underneath.
And don’t buy the camera yet. Rent, work, find out what you reach for. We’ve made the opposite mistake ourselves and it’s an expensive way to learn.
Last thing, on rates. Work out what a day actually costs you before you quote one. Gear depreciation, insurance, the unpaid day you spend on the edit, the tax you’ll owe on it. Plenty of people freelance for two years at a number that felt fine and was quietly losing money, and the ones who last are the ones who did that sum early.
We’re Luma Creative in San Francisco. We crew up around the Bay all year and we rent gear, so if you’re working out here, find us at lumacreative.com.