(upbeat music)
(yells)
- Some of you may have heard that
yeah Peter's gonna be leaving the office,
this space will soon no longer be his.
And it's a little bit bittersweet.
Super happy for him,
happy that he's getting a new space,
moving on to bigger and better things.
But it's gonna be kinda sad also,
missing you know, not having him here.
And to be fair, I probably will get way more things
done because he is a little bit of a distraction.
Just a little bit.
I've just got to figure out what I'm gonna do
with all this extra space now.
Huh, any ideas guys?
We didn't have a fight or anything.
There's nothing like that going on.
I can explain, maybe in another video
more about the whole breaking up office partners thing.
Probably the best part of having an office is
all of these shenanigans.
Really like all of these little boards and things,
it's just fun, a little break every once in a while you know
But we're not talking about that today.
Today we're gonna talk about money.
And we don't talk about money too often on this channel.
Not sure why.
Maybe maybe I just think that if your passion about
and you work hard, then it's actually fairly easy
to make money from film making.
But a fact of life is that we all need to pay your bills
and if you're putting at a ton of time watching my tutorials
at learning film making and all of that,
well it might just, well make some money from it.
Even if it's just like a little side hustle thing,
it's still nice to make a little bit of money
from your side hustle.
I think you would probably agree with me.
So let's say you watched a bunch of tutorials,
you've kind of learnt some film making things,
you have a camera, you started to make some
of your first videos,
the question is how do you land that first paid gig
'cause that's really the hardest one to land.
Once you land one, then I feel like it's like
it kinda just like snowball and it gets easier
and easier from there.
Well let me tell you first the story of how I landed
my very first paid film making gig.
And so we're gonna have to go way back in the time
probably when I was like 15 16.
We started filming skate videos.
So that was kind of my introduction into film making
and back then, that was more of a necessity.
My older brother edited it, you really liked that
and then we kind of all took turn filming
because you know, we had to keep it fair.
And none of us really necessarily love the film making
aspect of it, or maybe my older brother did more so
but I definitely wasn't in it for the film making
sort of things, I was just filming because
I wanted to capture my rollerblading,
if that makes sense.
So we all took turn filming and I was kind of
the first time I ever really use a camera,
but again, I was not into film making.
I didn't wanna be a film maker.
And then we're gonna skip forward just a few years
to 2008 and that's the first time I was like
hey I'm gonna make a video that had nothing to do
with rollerblading, it was actually to promo
an event or something up the church youth group
that I was going to.
Made my first none rollerblading video.
Trust me, it wasn't very good.
And then I made I think a couple more a little promos
maybe there was kinda Easter event or some like that,
made a couple, little other promo videos.
Then I made some short film personal videos
just for fun like this one of my brother
cannon balling into freezing cold water,
filmed in 60 frames per second,
use this plugin called twixtor to make it
look like it was like 1000 frames per second.
I thought I was pretty cool at the time.
And then came my very first paid gig
and that was a wedding.
I think I charged like a really small amount
and it was actually with my brother
so yeah I guess it wasn't very much money.
I think it was like around 500 to 1000 dollars
and then we split it between the two of us.
And that might sound like a lot of money
but spending the whole day filming
and then like a week editing after all that work,
it doesn't seem like as much money when you splitting it to.
But that was my very first paid gig as a film maker.
How did I get it?
Well let me tell you.
First of all, you need proof.
You need proof that you know what you're doing
as a film maker and how do you prove that?
Do you need like the person that you're trying
to get work from to come and follow along
while you're filming?
No, you just need a reel.
So a reel can be a series of videos that you've made
or it can be kind of a cut down of the best clip
the best footage that you've filmed
into this one short little reel,
like a one to two minute reel.
All your work that you've done.
Cut out all of the crappy stuff,
only have the good stuff.
This is your proof.
This is the proof that you can show to other people
to show them that you know what you're doing
as a film maker.
If you have a decent reel, a company or person
can really quickly look at that and be like
okay this guy has made some really cool stuff,
they know they're doing.
They know how to make films or videos.
Your reel is your proof.
Wait, you don't have a reel?
Oh that's fine, that's okay.
Start filming something.
Film anything.
Film a video of your baseball team.
Film a video of your friend with a nice car.
Film a travel video or film a little documentary
about your grandma.
Film anything and everything, just make sure
it looks really really good.
That's like the main thing on a reel is,
you want those clips that are going into your reel
to look really good.
So film at sunset.
Make sure you take your time to make that footage
look the best that you can
and remember, keep it short, keep it concise.
Cut out all of the stuff that's like mediocre
or not so good, show your friend
and ask him or her, what stuff should I cut,
what's the best stuff and what's the not so good stuff.
Because remember this is your proof
and if your proof isn't super convincing,
then it's gonna be a lot harder to sell yourself
to companies to make videos for them.
Okay so we have our reel, what do we do now?
Well it's time to ask.
Ask your friends, your family, anybody in your
kind of social circles, ask them whether it's a wedding,
if one of your cousin is getting married
or your uncle has a business
or your friends on some companies,
ask them if you can make a video for them.
You don't have much family or friends?
That's okay, ask your church, ask a non-profit,
ask the hair saloon around the corner
or the tattoo shop, ask anyone and everyone
if you could make a video for them.
The most important thing here is to just ask.
Now as you're making videos and you're kind of
building your reel and you're putting it on
social media like Instagram or YouTube or Facebook,
people are gonna start realizing like
oh Bob over there, he's starting to be a film maker
and people will naturally start to ask you
to film things for them.
But if that hasn't happen to you yet
then you just need to ask.
But remember to be reasonable.
You're not gonna get paid the big bucks
for your first gig and that's okay.
You just need to get your foot in the door,
you just need to get that first gig
and then that snowball can start rolling.
You need to be reasonable and understand that
you're still proving yourself and to make it
a little bit easier for that person to take a chance
on you, you can make the amount of money
that you're getting paid a little bit smaller
so it doesn't hurt as much if they've wasted their money
if you did a really bad job,
'cause that's what they're scared of in the end.
But at the same time, make it clear that you're
giving them a really heavily discounted rate
to kind of show that you know what you're doing
to prove yourself and that in the future,
you would be charging more.
So let's say I'm gonna charge 500 dollars
for this first video but in the future,
if you want more videos, it would be around 1,500
I don't know what the numbers are for you
but whatever those numbers are,
it will be over 1,500 dollars in the future,
make sure they know that you're giving them a discount
because you don't wanna fall in that trap
of you make that first video for 500 dollars
and then every single video you make from there on
is just for 500 dollars.
And it's also a selling point that you're giving
them this big discount that it's actually
worth 1,500 dollars but you're giving
it to them for 500 dollars.
So all those things make it a little bit easier
for somebody to take a chance on you
to get your first paid gig.
All goes well and they agree.
They want you to make a video for them.
You say yes, you say yes
and you do a dang good job.
No matter what you're getting paid,
even if you're giving them a really heavily discounted
rate, make sure you do the absolute best job
that you can because you don't know what doors
would be open through that and you don't want them
to think that, well it was just okay,
you didn't do that good of a job.
You want to do the absolute best job that you can do it
and that really applies to any project you work on.
You always wanna do your best, no matter
you're doing it for free or you're doing it for a discount
or you're making a lot of money from it.
It's crazy the doors that will get open
if you do a really good job.
You know, you do at first job for just a couple
hundred dollars and then couple of months later
you're doing this really big job with those people.
The most important thing is that you do a good job
and that you're a really pleasant person to work with.
And that my friends is how you can go from
a person who is just watching tutorials
and knows kind of how to work a camera
to getting your first paid gig.
And I got to tell you, it's a pretty good feeling
to get paid for the thing that you really like doing.
So I recommend it.
(upbeat music)
But at the same time, know that it's okay,
you don't need to get paid for your film making,
you can just do it as a hobby,
to do it for fun.
There's nothing wrong with that either.
But if you do wanna get paid for the skills
that you're learning, then just get that reel,
get that proof, get that reel made,
ask some people, ask the people that you know.
You friends, your family, all those people.
Ask if you can make a video for them.
Say yes, do a really good job,
be reasonable and now yeah, get your first paid gig.
Oh man, that got me out of breath.
Who would think it but it's actually kinda hard work
to ride one of these.
(upbeat music)
Do you think it's a bad idea to combine the one wheel
and the roller blade hover shoes?
Yup stupid idea.