by David Kaminski
DO THE WORK
Accept and take joy in the hundreds and thousands of hours to learning skills that are essential to your craft and medium. You will not only need to know them, but to know how to do them well and quickly if you want to be paid as a professional later. Some tasks are boring, difficult, slow, or repetitive, but they have their own rhythm and require their own time. Learn and study even small tasks. In the details is the art and the perfection. It is okay to fail. Learn from it. Let it make you smarter and more humble, and you will feel the wisdom of the craft inside of you begin to grow. Do work that you care about and that gives you a sense of peace or happiness. Let your passion carry you forward.
PLAN AND SET GOALS
Write down your goals: weekly, monthly, and yearly. Chart your progress and allow yourself to change goals as opportunities arise and your ideas fade or grow. Embrace change as well as the rigors required to complete tasks and to meet goals.
UNDERSTAND THE MEDIUM
Immerse yourself. Know the history, the genre, and its particulars. Read broadly but also deeply about the films or people you admire. Study their work and see their progress and changes. Break down the scenes you love with a stopwatch. Imitate them. Remake them. Live inside the material. Always know that you are working in a tradition. Thank those you have learned from. Make a style of your own, and continue to grow.
CHART YOUR DATA
Learn how long it takes you to complete a task. Can you do it better than others? What is your hourly rate of output? What will it take for you to make a living at this? How long will it take you to pay off your equipment or investment? This is a business, so do the math.
KNOW THE TECH
- Study the vocabulary and write it down. Know the details of data rates, ohms, focal lengths, MHz, menus and submenus. Everything.
- Create lists and series of actions that will help you succeed. Make a list of the obstacles and the solutions.
- Find the experts and follow them. Learn and experiment on your own. Ask others who have worked at these locations, done this type of shot, or worked with this particular issue.
- Make an entry for every job before you go on it with pre-production notes, issues you will address, problems you anticipate, and their solutions. Draw and sketch the layouts, the positions. Take photos and keep them as references. As a back-up plan, consider multiple redundancies with different layers of solutions or options or gear, and learn to improvise. Read your journal every time you go out on a job. It will make you smarter. You are teaching yourself and learning what you need to. Be proud of that.
BUILD YOUR REPUTATION
Do work that makes you proud, collect it, and share it. The work you do is the foundation of your reputation. So is the way you listen to and work with others. You are your own commodity. Do what is right. Stay strong and stay positive. Everyone knows everyone. So do your best in all things.
BROADEN YOUR SCOPE
Allow yourself to grow and change radically. Do a 180. Try something you have never done before. You might be good at it. You will change more than you will ever know in the career ahead of you, so go ahead and let yourself experiment and these may lead to your career or another chapter of it.
STAY CONNECTED
Continue to stay in touch with friends from childhood, college, and your professional career. You will find happiness and jobs by knowing people.
BECOME INTERESTED IN OTHERS
Embrace everyone around you. Learn from them. Learn about them. Care about their work too. These people will be friends and partners in the future.
David Kaminski works with community film groups, professional organizations, students, and adults to make films and to create media for entertainment and social change. He lives in the New York metro area. David’s students have earned two Cine Golden Eagles, eight Telly Awards, and over 50 national awards for their work. They also have screened their films more than 200 times in festivals across the country and internationally.
Featured in StudentFilmmakers Magazine, 2013, Vol. 8, No. 2.
