- Hey everybody, Brian Hunt here with you again,
this is our second video in this series
on getting work in the film, TV and video landscape,
and market, and how to keep getting work in the industry.
And this video, I am talking about doing spec work.
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Okay, so what is spec work?
So, spec work is a term used for creating content
that you are making it look like it is a paid content,
it's a commercial, it's a short film,
it's a short documentary, but you are doing it all yourself
and with your own money, you're not being paid,
you're not being commissioned by anybody to do this.
And I'm sure a lot of you out there
are already doing this kinda stuff without even knowing it,
knowing that it's called spec work.
But spec work is a really good and useful thing to use
to build yourself up.
So for an example, if you wanna become known as
somebody who is very good at shooting cars,
but you've never shot cars before,
and you're trying to sell this service to people,
or you want people to hire you as a director of photography,
or you want somebody to hire you as a director,
and you've never worked on a project
or shot stuff like this.
They wanna see examples, and a lot of times in the industry,
when you are pitching on a job
or somebody pitching you as a director
or as a director of photography,
the client or the agency is gonna wanna see
samples of your work,
and it really does help
to have samples of that work in the genre
or the type of things that they are gonna be shooting,
or they want to cover.
So for example, if you're again,
working on something or you wanna do something on cars
and be known as a person who creates content for cars
and high end stuff that way,
then you would go out and try to create a spot.
So coming up with a spot,
thinking about what could be a cool short film
or commercial spot, trying to figure out
where you could use as locations,
all these things are not just gonna actually help you
land another job in that field,
but they are also teaching you
those ways you need to do production.
Cause basically, you're gonna have to do all those things
that you need to do when you go out for a paid job.
If I land a paid job and they want me to film
a short documentary about a business
or somebody's story about a product they use,
and that's gonna be a short documentary.
I'm gonna be going out, I need to figure out,
setting up the shoot, I gotta talk to the talent beforehand,
we gotta script some stuff out,
we gotta storyboard some things, I gotta go location scout.
You're basically doing all those things,
and it's a great way to learn the craft
as well as creating some great content
that you can show off to people.
I have found a lot of times the stuff that I've have
on my website, on my real, things that people have seen
that I've done, and that they really like,
they're like, wow, I love this piece that way you did.
I'm like, yeah, that was a spec job,
that was something that I just went out and did.
So, for myself in kinda more the documentary
and branded content field,
there's been a lot of times when I've been traveling
or I hear a story about something,
and I know that it's not a piece that I'm gonna be doing,
that somebody's going to be paying me to do,
or it's gonna be hard to pitch as a thing,
but it can visually make a great short film.
Spec work can be things that you can also submit
to festivals and get awards that way
as you own the rights to the films
or you own the commercials
or the spec commercials that you've done.
So I've done a bunch of short documentaries this way,
where I have just heard of a story
or I met somebody and just thought
this would be a great story to cover
and went out and filmed them and spent the time doing it
and spent a lot of time putting these things together.
And they have been very beneficial
because people see that.
And again, because you are creatively in control,
going back to the video I did before
about the number one rule, don't an (beep)
and being careful what you say on set,
you need to be very cautious
in the way you speak to the director
or whoever you're dealing with.
When you're doing spec work and you're doing your own work,
it's whatever you wanna do, it's your creative things,
and that's the cool thing of it.
And when people know that it's like,
well, who produced this?
Who was this done by?
It's like, well, this is my own film.
I directed this, I produced this, I shot this,
I edited this, and some of the cases,
there's been a lot of work that I've done that way.
And they see like, wow, this is great,
like there was no agency behind this,
what was the budget on it?
I mean, that was sometimes that has been
the comment I've got on some spec work.
When they would say to me,
"what was the budget on this?"
I would say, well, budget was my time
and whatever expenses I need to pay out
to people to come out and do it, to travel,
otherwise we had no budget.
And it's kinda an impressive thing
for a lot of ad agencies or people you're dealing with
or people that are looking at hiring you,
that you could pull something off like that.
And it really helps to bring you up,
and the thoughts or their perception of you
helping them bring that up as well,
because they see that you can actually execute
and do something.
And that's another great reason for doing this as well,
because if you have never produced anything at all,
if you've never really have much that you have shot
that you wanna show off,
going out and doing a spec piece and actually finishing,
not just shooting like little scenes
that you wanna have for Instagram,
going out and shooting a whole short film,
a whole commercial and putting it together
and spending the time to edit it and put it together
and do the sound design and get the color correction done
and making it look awesome.
That will really help you to have that,
to show off to people and just help you to learn
as an artist, what you need to do
when you actually get paid to do that.
So, there's like a lot of benefits for spec work.
Let me know guys, in the comments below,
what are your thoughts on spec work?
What are things in projects that you're trying to do
that you would love to do
that you're trying to get off the ground.
Thanks so much guys for watching,
if you liked the video, please give me a like,
please subscribe to the channel
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for the next time I upload the video
and we'll see you on the next one.
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