Noah Fouch

Good for you! I started shooting on super 8 at 10 years of age and in middle school, I was volunteering for the local community access TV station. I was also going to a creative arts camp in the summer for kids, that really helped a lot. It was wonderful being able to experiment and do awesome projects for fun.

 

The key for me at the time was to just shoot everything I could, even if nobody was gonna see it. I loved having access to not only Super 8 film equipment, but also still cameras and a plethora of commercial/industrial broadcast video cameras. It was that access that drove me to shoot stuff because at the time, home video cameras were expensive. Today you can easily buy a camera, like a DSLR so you can shoot some video and stills. The key is to expose manually and understand lighting based on exposure and how to create the image, rather then "capture" what you see. That's really the trick to becoming good at this.

 

Once you're in Junior in High school, you can start to make some decisions about your career path. By that point in time, things will libel to be different then they are today, it's not like your going to college tomorrow, it's a long away off. The industry already has millions of people in it, so you've gotta define yourself pretty well to be part of it. Unfortunately, it's not just about how good you are as a worker, but it's also who you know, that's the hardest part. You have to learn how to hustle and you've gotta be really good at social events and network your way into work. This is why a lot of people who go to school for filmmaking, try to work on the skills they lack in other areas outside of the actual art of filmmaking itself. Many get business degree's, which is what I'd do as a backup career, just incase your filmmaking dreams don't happen.

 

For the time being, just get experience and have fun. I teach high school and I always tell my kids, you never get to become a kid again... so this is your only chance to do JUST THAT. Once you graduate from High School, life changes, no longer do you have the opportunity to just waste time if you want. Life creeps up fast and until you've "made it" you will be hustling no matter what profession you wind up with. So just go have fun and make cool poop consequence free until you're ready for the big league.

 

 

Nice! Well, in a few years, there will be a new gadget. If you wanna be a gadget oriented guy, then you've gotta find someone who has one of those gadgets and learn it. Then you've gotta be good at it to the point of people hiring you, which is hard when it's easy to learn like a MoVi. If you keep learning new gadgets and new toys, you'll have a niche that has some value. The only problem is that there are 754 other people who wanna do the same thing. So new fads and gadgets are always a troublesome thing. This is why I rely heavily on old school techniques, then the newest hottest toy.

 

Camera operator is a job that will always be around of course, but it's harder because so many DP's shoot their own stuff these days on the smaller shows you'd be starting on. So getting the operating experience generally comes from your own shooting, maybe a 2nd camera on a show. I mean most of the time I operate, it's 2nd camera because the 1st is gobbled up by too many people. Nothing wrong with that, still need to be good at it.

 

 

Noted above. :)

 

 

Yes and No...

 

If you walk into film school with little to no experience, you aren't gonna graduate working in the industry anyway. It's a profession that's impossible to learn in 4 years in a closed environment. Very few people who attend film school because they had little experience, ever use those skills out of school.

 

If you enter film school with a lot of experience, film school doesn't "hurt" really. It will only fine tune your skills and teach you things that you absolutely didn't know before about the business of the industry. Obviously it depends on the school, but all of the big film schools in the US generally HELP get you work. So unless you've got a great hookup in a media city for work right out of high school, I would go to college.

 

The big catch with film school and the reason so many people who DIDN'T GO put it down, is that people just assume if you start as a high school graduate, you'll have more time to work your way up the ladder, instead of "wasting" 4 years. I disagree with this advice because frankly, if you go to a good school, you will make long-lasting connections that will help you get jobs in the future when one of your "mates" scores it big time through their cousin or something. You never know who you'll meet at school and neighsayers don't take that into account. I can personally attest to film school networking, giving me my first two jobs here in Los Angeles. I can also attest to randomly getting invites to events and even job offers BECAUSE I went to a certain school. Now, they haven't led me to a career of wealth and prosparity, but that's of my own doing and a different story.

 

To sum it up, I think film school has it's benefits and should be looked into. If you can live at home, get a scholarship and have your parents pay for the rest (like I did) then go for it. If you're going to leave film school with $120k worth of debt... don't do it. Film school should be one of the those educations that's cheap enough that it doesn't bog you down with financial burdon for your entire life. So just think of that as your making your decisions.

Wow man, that was really helpful advice, thank you so much

If there were any secret formula i surely haven't been let in on it. My best advice, though, is that work comes not from school but from other work you've done. That as the case, perhaps a wise idea is to use "college" as a way to get to a production city, such as LA, and be able to learn and try to work when you can--- in any job.

It's incredibly competitive. Keep your head up, work hard, stay always a student (as you are always learning). By the time you come into the profession the Movi may not even exist.

But if you want to work in film; you have to go where the film is and generally the sooner the better. God only knows how much further i'd be had I not been too nostalgic for the notion of home and picked up as soon as I could to LA.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks a lot for the advice

Hello, my name is Noah. I've always had an interest in horror movies and all sorts. I've been lurking on this site and decided to post for once. I'm currently a junior in high school, and I'm going to be taking a film course off campus, like traveling away from school for a couple hours to learn about film. My dream job is to be a Camera Operator or a MoVi operator. I just wanted to know if anybody could give me the advice to further my dream career so I can make a living off it. I want to know if Film school is worth the money, etc. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to respond and give me advice with my life choice.