Eric Buist

This may be a little cynical, but when it comes down to it: you either sell your own work or you make things to sell other people’s work.

The ideal situation is selling your own work, but the percentage of people that can do this is so low that we often end up using our talents to sell things for other people.

One of the best ways to not feel like you are selling out your skills is to work in the film industry. This means you are working on other people’s work. There is not a set client and you often work under more experienced people to gain the skills needed to one day make your own work better.

Where recent graduates often flounder is in thinking that they can handle their own clients and produce creative work right out of college. This is a very dangerous place to be. While it is possible for recent grads to create good stuff and get paid by their clients, they often charge far too little to make ends meet. $100/day seems like a good rate to bill out, but if you think about the amount of time you spend not having a client and searching for new clients, you will soon find that a month of working at $100/day runs out pretty fast. 

To the recent grad I recommend this way of finding work and getting paid to be creative, it is a combination of these two methods. Work for other people’s clients. Many production companies hire freelancers to handle assistant editing and assistant shooting (running a second cam on interviews, helping on set…). I have found this to be a great way to work when you are starting out. You are learning from established professionals and you get to ask them questions about why they work in certain ways. You are a freelancer, so you will still have time to work on your own projects, but you don’t have to spend tons of time looking for new clients,  you can just focus on making yourself better and selling yourself to production companies. This is what I do.

My situation is this: I create my own stuff, but I do not plan on people buying it. I plan on people seeing the progress I make in certain areas and the fact that I am capable of creating my own work. To pay the bills, I end up freelancing for other companies in the area, to help them sell things for their clients or make things that promote their own companies. 

It is all about your ability to sell yourself and show people that you do know what you are doing when you get on set, the best way to do it is to learn from the pros and then go out and do it yourself… practice, practice, practice when you are not working.