This is my first requested blog topic, coming to us via my good friend and long time co-producer John Rael.  He asked that I at some point put on paper my thoughts about a topic that I often rant about.  It’s an affliction near and dear to my heart since I’ve seen it befall so many of my friends.  I, too, have succumbed to it.  

If you’re new to the entertainment industry, fresh out of film school or figuring out your first DSLR, it’s likely you’ve had a series of thoughts that seemed really great at the time.  The series of thoughts usually go like this:

• • The Supply Thought:  I’ve got a handle on this writing/directing/cinematography/video editing thing and I need a way to make money.
  • The Demand Thought:  Hey, aren’t there people out there who need the services of a filmmaker?  People who are starting out just like me?  Actors needing reels and headshotsI  Web series producers that need cinematographers and editors!  Bands that need music videos!  I should get them to give me money!
  • The Time Thought:  And this will be something I can support myself with part time while I pursue my real goal of getting into TV or Feature Films!

Look at those three thoughts, young filmmaker.  Getting a sinking feeling yet?  A feeling that these thoughts are a little too familiar – that you’ve in fact had them or are pursuing them?  Sure, on the surface, this looks pretty ideal, that they’re the perfect solution to breaking into the film industry.  A chance to hone your craft and get ahead.  Easy, simple, straightforward.  

But they’re not.  

Following these thoughts lead to a gateway of a whole new world and lifestyle.  You will soon transform yourself into something you weren’t expecting.

Prepare to become….a bottom feeder.

What is Bottom Feeding?

In nature, a bottom feeder is a fish that swims at the bottom of an ocean or lake.  It feeds on what falls there and ekes out a simple existence.  

In Hollywood, it’s not much different.  There are two basic tiers of people.  First are those at the top who have all the big money and who make all the big projects.  And second are those at the bottom who, well, don’t.  They survive on the few crumbs that fall their way.

Bottom feeders are in trouble right from the start – the world is against you.  Let’s break down the train of thoughts that lead you here and why each one leads to trouble, and discuss the CORE PROBLEM of bottom feeding.

The Supply Thought

First off, if you’re in a major hub of filmmaking, like Los Angeles, then you’ve got competition.  Massive competition.  A vast sea of competition.  Every year, literally thousands of new filmmakers are graduating from film schools all across the area, from major colleges and universities, to community colleges, to schools that specialize only….in….film…

You’re competing not only with them, but all the graduates who came before and all who will come after.  And let’s not forget those still in film school who are looking to get started early.  Oh, and what about those self taught prodigies who skipped film school entirely and are ready to jump in now?

And a lot of them, at some point or another, have thought about bottom feeding or are attempting to break into bottom feeding.

In basic economic terms, this a problem with an overabundance of supply.  Too much supply cheapens the market all around.  If something is abundant, why pay a lot for it?  As my friends say, it’s hard to throw a stick in Los Angeles without hitting a cinematographer with a full camera package who is eager to shoot.

To overcome the overabundance of supply, you have to find ways of standing out.  You have to charge rock bottom prices, you have to work longer hours for less, you have to buy the most marketable equipment to attract producers who know nothing more about equipment than the label – in fact, I just had a friend break down and buy a RED for exactly that reason.  A director of photography can drone on and on about superior encoding, dynamic range differences, or easier workflows of other cameras, but all a producer hears is “BLAH BLAH BLAH.”  But producers know that RED cameras are good!  Because the marketing told them so!

So your Canon 5D Mark III or Sony a7S II isn’t going to cut it.  You’re going to have to buy a mid range RED with Cine lenses, and it’d help if you can supply a 3 ton grip truck worth of G&E as well.  Do all that, and a producer might be willing to raise your rate as a cinematographer up as high as $200 a day.  That should do wonders to help pay off the tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt you had to wrack up to buy all that.

The Demand Thought

So who is it, exactly, that’s going to be buying all your services?  Who will need you to light, shoot, transcode, and edit their material?

(But they’ll never ask you to write!  You see, it’s their first script and, even though you’re a professional screenwriter, acclaimed with awards and peer recognition, their first draft unformatted Word document of a script is perfect just the way it is. Their brother and significant other told them so!  Final Draft?  Celtx?  What are those?)

I mentioned a few categories above.  Let’s look at them and some of the problems with each.

Actors needing a demo reel:  Short, contained scenes that only need to be a few minutes long.  Not only could they expand the actor’s reel, but yours as well.  Sounds good, yes?

Here is a major problem:  actors don’t have money.  This is a CORE PROBLEM in bottom feeding – the people you’re trying to get money from…don’t have any!!!  They’re just trying to get by, pay their hugely inflated rent with whatever earnings they’re scrounging together from bartending, barrista-ing, and Lyft driving.  Any leftover money is going toward their improv and acting classes.

And that, right there, is why it’s called bottom feeding.  You’re trying to get money from people who, like yourself, are on the bottom.  You’re trying to get money from people who don’t have any money.

But maybe, just maybe, if their agent hounds them long enough or if you get lucky enough, you’ll land an actor as a client.  That leads to new problems.

Remember that actors don’t have money?  Well, that means that they won’t be able to pay you much, which means a micromircromicrobudget, which means shooting limitations.  Forget location permits and exotic locales.  Nothing says “production value” like shooting in the actor’s cramped one bedroom apartment with undecorated plain white walls and second hand Ikea furniture, am I right?

And having a crew?  Ha!  You’re likely to be running a one man band, lighting, camera operating, and directing all at once (provided the actor isn’t directing, that is – they probably are).  If you get down on your knees and plead, maybe the actor can be convinced to hire a sound guy, who will have to one man band the sound department as well – laving the actors up, boom operating, and sound mixing by himself/herself.

And finally, it all comes together and you shoot it.  You thought maybe you might have something for your reel as well (remember, the end goal is for you to break into Features and TV, so this should help, right?).  But there’s just one final problem…most new actors can’t actually act…or, if they can act, they can’t direct themselves…or if they can direct themselves, they wrote the script themselves and it’s terrible….or if they can act, direct, and write really well, then they’re probably also smart enough to figure out a camera and call themselves a filmmaker, so then why the hell do they need you?

And then, of course, you’ll be the one to edit together this monstrosity, which will take longer than you think it will and will require multiple, multiple revisions.  There’s a rule in Hollywood (and in life) that the less the client pays, the harder they’ll make you work.  Since you’ve been paid next to nothing for all this, prepare to be a slave for a few days.

Actors needing head shots:  If you’re not being referred to them by their agent, you’ll be lucky if they’re willing to pay you more than $50.  And that’s provided you can even get them as clients.  You’ll soon exhaust all the actor friends you know as clients and will have to start advertising, i.e. spending money on something that you don’t know will even pay off.

Web series producers needing cinematographers and editors:  Since 99% of the time the producer of the web series is an actor who wrote the script themselves, refer to Actor needing a demo reel above.  It’s basically the same deal, except that you’ll be expected to do more and provide more for approximately the same amount of money.

Bands that need music videos:  Musicians also don’t have money.  Once again, we’re back to the CORE PROBLEM in bottom feeding.

I could leave it at that, but will expand it to say that the musicians who might hire you aren’t going to be the next young, hot sensation that all the kids are going to love.  They’re more than likely the over 40 year old white rapper with a dad bod who thinks he’s “just about to make it” and that this music video will be just the thing to do it.

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And of course, even though there is demand for your services from the above groups, why would they demand you?  And how would they even find you?  

That’s a big one.  Like I said before, you’ll quickly exhaust your actor, producer, musician contacts, so then you’ll have to start advertising – dumping money into an endeavor with uncertain results.  Facebook ads, Youtube ads, Twitter ads, fliers at improv clubs, and postcards at acting workshops, all pointing to a website that you have to learn how to construct yourself.  And who knows if you used the right ads?  Do you know how to create a compelling ad for your services?  Or target the right people?  Did you spend all that ad money in vain?

The Time Thought

But all this being said…it is possible to succeed at being a bottom feeder.  There are several successful production companies that specialize in acting reels, that make a decent business off of web series, or that create quality music videos.  And there are also highly paid and much sought after headshot photographers.

And it is possible, it really, really is possible to do any of those things, provided you have talent and ability.

Therefore, the final thing it all takes to succeed is…time.  Time.  A lot of time.  More time that you would think.  More time than you would know.  

We’re talking good ol’ fashioned entrepreneur time, i.e. your business will be on your mind 24/7 for years.  And years it will take, time it will take, before you really start to have success and do more than scrape by.  Time in building a business, ad by ad, client by client, job by job.  Time for word of mouth to start getting out, person by person, at a snail’s crawl, all across town.  Time in building capital to invest in new equipment to get better clients to get higher paying work that won’t be enough to pay all your bills and your business’s bills yet, but after repeating this cycle a few times, it might.  

With enough time, you can overcome the supply problem.  After much time, your product might be good enough to stand out.  You’ve figured out ads.  You’ve collected enough great material for your company’s demo reel.  You stand out, an island of quality in the sea of over supply.

With enough time, demand may start to shift.  Agents may send their clients to you, because you get results.  Actors might come to you for headshots, because your headshots get them auditions.  Musicians might come to you because they want you to, like, do a thing like you did in, like, your other music video, or this other music video they saw somewhere random on Youtube,  but, like, make it original and totally bad ass and shredding, but also, like, spiritual, you know?

But time to work on your other career?  Your career as a feature film director or TV showrunner?  Who has time for that?  To make this career as a bottom feeder succeed, this is it.  This is your life now.

Is Bottom Feeding For You?

For some, it might be!  And bottom feeding is probably an unkind term for this phenomenon, but it’s the best I’ve come up with.  Some people might find happy lives crow barring open a crack in this crowded field, wedging themselves in, and succeeding.  And who knows?  After years of being successful at bottom feeding, you might pull together enough experience, industry contacts, and money to make the jump to features and TV.  

There are many, many different paths to success.  The purpose of this post isn’t to 100% dissuade you from making a go at bottom feeding.  It’s to give you as clear of an insight as I can into what lies in your future and what your expectations should be.  Bottom feeding isn’t for the weak of heart or lazy – to succeed at it will take all of the skills of a savvy entrepreneur that you can muster.  It’s not something you can half ass and succeed at.  It’s an all-or-nothing kind of deal.

But you could consider another approach.  Consider the stable, ordinary job that lets you get by.  The job that doesn’t eat up all your time, the one that you can put down at the end of the day and no longer think about, then pick up again at the start of the work day tomorrow.  The job that let’s you…balance.  That let’s you have evenings and weekends off to pursue other career goals.  

There’s nothing shameful in Lyft driving, barista-ing, bartending, or working as a cog at someone else’s production company if you can still work on making the perfect screenplay in your off time, in learning how to package and develop it into something that an investor can’t say no too.

Proceed with caution and with clear understanding.  Clarify your goals and your paths to getting to them, and whichever route you choose,  I’ll see you at the finish line.