Broke and very amateur filmmaker (aspiring DP) living in a rural town. I want to pursue a career in film but have no real ways of making that happen. I need some helpful advice

[Brittney Rose]

First off, I went to college in a rural town where farming is their main educational practice. Population is 10,000 strong and if you wanted to go to a city with 500,000 plus, it’s a 2.5 hour drive.

I took a film class where made a couple of 1 to 2 minute shorts and basically did the whole cha bang by myself with me and my parents as the actors. I loved it and have always craved more but unfortunately I can’t move to somewhere else and pay to go to school unless I want to go into deep debt. So I think moving as soon as I can would be best, but I don’t know what city is a good location for opportunity that’s also not going downhill…

I know how to use a mirrorless camera pretty well and after effects/premier just from dabbling lightly, but I know nothing about the ins and outs of cinematography or lighting or gripping. Zero. I know the internet has some great resources… somewhere, but I don’t know how I’m going to learn to do this on my own with no local groups or anything like that for miles. 

I very much feel like I’m stuck in a tough place because I can’t afford the proper education that also comes with the plus of having the schools resources and a team of other people helping to brings things together. 

Any insight would be great on how to navigate this tough situation because I’m genuinely tired of sitting around and stalling because I don’t know what to do! 

I just wanted to elaborate that like I mention before, I’ve had the opportunity to make two shorts for a class in school and had to wear all the hats to make them happen. But at the end of the day I found myself gravitating towards wanting to be a DP since I’ve had a hobby of photography already and love the look of Gregory Crewdson and Ian Howorth (who is a photographer and DP). That class really bought those two interests together for me but I’ve never really been sure how to bridge that gap of being a singular photographer and becoming a DP who works with many others on a crew when there’s not even the smallest student group doing things around here or non paid indie stuff. 

Edited October 14 by Brittney Rose
Added more details

[James Compton]

Welcome, Brittney. This site is vault of useful cinematography information and insights. There are professionals that are members of this forum that are very generous with their work experience. Look up the posts of David Mullen on his work on BIG LOVE, MANURE, JENNIFER'S BODY and LOVE WITCH. 

 When it comes to cinematography, your eyes and intuition are your best tools. Learn to "see" light. It's direction, the type of source and it's color. Learn how to dial in contrast ratios.

 Utilize nature when you don't have actors. Your rural location has stories. Make micro documentaries about the perils of farmers, nearby ghost towns, migrant workers, etc.

 Forum member Stephen Murphy made a visual PDF series about the work of 7 great DP's from the 80's, 90's and 2000's. Have a look at that. It can inspirational. Send me a DM, I can send it to you.

My old Chinese kungfu teacher used to say "talking doesn't cook the rice". Get out in them cornfields, start shooting. So read up, ponder and then go and make it happen. 

 

 

 

[Max Field]

Either have lots of friends on real film sets who can nepo you in or develop your own audience by posting (good) content online. Good thing you can't afford film school because film school in 2024 is a scam for 99.8% of universities. You will need to actively manifest the completion of every project you start. The game is "can I progress quickly enough to a sustainable film career before the burden of real life bills forces me into a day job permanently"

[Brian Drysdale]

The basic kit you've currently got with the mirrorless camera and After Effects and Premiere is pretty powerful, I assume you've also got a tripod. You can use work lights combined with lighting gels and some diffusion gels for the lighting. If you plan to DP drama, you need some actors to film, there are usually some in most communities.

Having a basic sound kit will also help, there may be some people in your area into music who can assist in this.

You may want to be the DP, but if no one else in your area is making films, you will have to be proactive and become the "local film industry".  Farmers tend to be very practical people, so may be able to provide solutions to problems.

Try making longer films, say 8 to 12 minutes, so that you can progress in using the camera to tell a story. You are unlikely to be able to make urban stories, but there's a rich vein of rural stories. Today you can screen them online, you may be able to create a revenue stream with some types of productions on YouTube etc.

Unfortunately, when you reach a certain standard, you may have to move to a production centre to progress. I know very successful people in the film industry, coming from rural areas, who have done this.

 

 

[Aapo Lettinen]

yes like others said, find some great local stories and make local micro documentaries and short films based on real life around you. The locals will appreciate it greatly when you want to tell about their life and history and will surely support you in some way. Don't make generic stuff like everyone else in the World does (copying Hollywood scenes and such), tell stuff about the real world you know best and those would actually be much more interesting to outsiders too so it would be easier to post them to festivals and such if you like or gain internet views as they stand out from the basic indie "shoot shoot bang bang" or "boy meets girl beautiful city lights" stuff 🙂 

at some point in the future you may have to move to bigger town but at the moment you have to gain experience and have a safe learning environment so definitely stay local for some time first and see what kind of "film industry" you can build there!

[Jon O'Brien]

Yes, if you want to get started as a DP you have to build your own 'film industry' where you are if you're in a provincial area. Nothing will happen otherwise. You have to be the energy and knowledge base that will get films made. A life lesson I know all too well.

This means that even though your true interest is being a DP you will have to come up with stories, write screenplays, recruit actors, figure out costuming and props, find locations, and finally, direct as well as do the camera. It's a huge amount of energy and drive needed to be a one person film industry. Been there.

Would kinda like to do it again but I'm a bit busy for that now. I hoped I could pick up some camera work gigs but so far there's very little interest in what I have to offer ... because, yep, you guessed it, I need to first create some notable film that will cause people to take me seriously, but to do that I have to drop everything and go back to being a one man band local 'film industry'.

Edited October 15 by Jon O'Brien

[Aapo Lettinen]

On 10/14/2024 at 8:31 PM, Brittney Rose said:

First off, I went to college in a rural town where farming is their main educational practice. Population is 10,000 strong and if you wanted to go to a city with 500,000 plus, it’s a 2.5 hour drive.

I took a film class where made a couple of 1 to 2 minute shorts and basically did the whole cha bang by myself with me and my parents as the actors. I loved it and have always craved more but unfortunately I can’t move to somewhere else and pay to go to school unless I want to go into deep debt. So I think moving as soon as I can would be best, but I don’t know what city is a good location for opportunity that’s also not going downhill…

I know how to use a mirrorless camera pretty well and after effects/premier just from dabbling lightly, but I know nothing about the ins and outs of cinematography or lighting or gripping. Zero. I know the internet has some great resources… somewhere, but I don’t know how I’m going to learn to do this on my own with no local groups or anything like that for miles. 

I very much feel like I’m stuck in a tough place because I can’t afford the proper education that also comes with the plus of having the schools resources and a team of other people helping to brings things together. 

Any insight would be great on how to navigate this tough situation because I’m genuinely tired of sitting around and stalling because I don’t know what to do! 

I just wanted to elaborate that like I mention before, I’ve had the opportunity to make two shorts for a class in school and had to wear all the hats to make them happen. But at the end of the day I found myself gravitating towards wanting to be a DP since I’ve had a hobby of photography already and love the look of Gregory Crewdson and Ian Howorth (who is a photographer and DP). That class really bought those two interests together for me but I’ve never really been sure how to bridge that gap of being a singular photographer and becoming a DP who works with many others on a crew when there’s not even the smallest student group doing things around here or non paid indie stuff. 

the photography hobby should definitely help too. At first you can use cameras which fit both hobbies and after some time can then update the video/cinema stuff whenever needed.

Like mentioned before you should definitely use the local resources and stories and try to advance that way. It is, actually, possible to gain some kind of budgets locally even in rural communities if you tell stories which are important to local people. So micro documentaries would definitely "sell" and anything about the life of local people is potential too whether doc or fiction. Naturally this makes it easier to shoot documentary style stuff but maybe that actually would be a really good starting point in any case, documentaries teach you efficiency and you learn to utilize natural lighting to the max and take care of the good sound, pretty much all the stuff needed to make fiction too (and which people who start with no-budget narrative shoot shoot bang bang stories often overlook causing them tons of problems when trying to make anything).

The main idea is to find projects which someone else would pay for. Not necessarily because you could not by yourself, but because if someone else pays for the expenses it allows you to shoot more stuff, A LOT more, you can just jump from project to the next without needing a year to gain enough own money to do so. The downside is that you cant entirely decide by yourself what you will shoot, you need to kind of go with the flow contantly fishing the next good project which would be locally important enough that someone would pay your food and gas and hard drives and theater screening etc for it.

a good starting point would be to figure out a documentary project which buys you a new better camera. it is entirely possible and should be rather easy if being clever enough. For example some kind of local farmers etc. association would use some kind of documentary about some kind of stuff and you could make that happen if only having a new better camera 😄 

 

[Leon Brehony]

I understand your connundrum. I grew up very broke in a council estate in North-West England (I imagine the US equivalent is a 'project') with zero industry connections. I went down the route of getting into a ton of debt to go to a practical film school in Edinburgh - mainly because I always wanted to try living somewhere else. I agree with the general consensus that film schools are a rip-off and the people teaching tend to have no clue but I would do it again in a heartbeat because getting 4 years of access to camera  & lighting kit, projects/briefs, collaborators and a library that stocked pretty much every cinematography book and American Cinematographer issue ever written was incredibly helpful. And Edinburgh is by no means a major film-hub but I managed to start getting low level jobs and trying to work my way up as well as doing a lot of videography-type 'jobs'.

So yes it was risky, and I've spent most of my life being flat-broke and terrified in an industry where it's beneficial to be both wealthy and well-connected but I was in a similar position as yourself about 14 years ago and now I make a living working as a DP. I've still (hopefully) got a long way to go and am definitely still in the early stages of my career but I've got no regrets about taking big risks with no guarantees.

Take all of that with a huge pinch of salt because everyone has a different path but I'm just trying to highlight that there is something liberating about having nothing to lose.

P.S. None of that would've happened without help from A LOT of people. I found that I got certain advantages by just being honest about where I am and asking people (rental houses, DPs, directors, crew, production companies, colourists, etc.) for favours. A remarkable amount of my peers early on didn't want to ask for help. Pride maybe? I don't know.

[Stewart McLain]

There’s a lot of great advice for you here.  I, for sure, agree with the notion that you can get things going under your own steam in the place where you are and make significant strides before picking up stakes and moving somewhere else.  There are tons of great resources for learning on the internet.

However, I want to speak in favor of school for a moment.  I went through a fabulous film program at a community college in Florida.  I chose it because of its practical, blue-collar approach. It was also remarkably affordable.  The program was designed so that students filled crew positions on feature films working under local professionals in the key positions.  We did three features in one year in addition to our regular coursework.   These were legit productions shot on 35mm and 16mm film using all of the standard equipment of the day.  One those films went on to have international distribution.  Off the top of my head, I can think of about a dozen classmates who went on to successful Hollywood careers as directors, DPs, boom ops, dolly grips, stunt performers, ACs, UPMs… Other former classmates have careers doing production work of one form or other in their local area.  A major part of their success was being able to prove themselves to those local pros to get their first jobs and then by supporting one another as they moved on.

You don’t need to go to school to have a career in film but it can be beneficial and they’re not all rip-offs.  However you do it though, I think a couple things are true: 

1) You get out what you put in.

2)  Nobody does it all alone.  You need to develop personal and professional support networks.  

[Clark Nikolai]

You're in luck that you live in an age in which you can get good quality filmmaking equipment at relatively low cost, connect (online) with others who share interests, and get an audience for them (Vimeo, YouTube, etc).

I agree with the others, make short films about what is around you. They don't have to be elaborate. Think of them as learning opportunities. If you're not happy with them, just don't show them to anyone after. They'll still have been useful to you and your education.

There are several websites you can learn the craft. nofilmschool.com, noamkroll.com, filmmakermagazine.com, etc. I did some searching and there's a filmmaking coop in Nashville. www.nashvillefilmmakers.com

I can relate to your situation as I'm also from a small town in a rural area that didn't have a history of filmmaking (I since have become aware that it did,)but I was able to use whatever I could get my hands on and make films/videos. I was able to borrow video cameras and edit suites and got some stuff made. Later I was helped by a filmmaking coop and helped start a video artist coop. I now have a body of work that I can be proud of, a few awards, screenings at festivals and have done a lot of interesting things. It's taken me pretty far and it all started by me having no resources or support. If I had waited for someone else to help me I would have never got this far.