Filmmaking is typically romanticized as a purely artistic pursuit. We imagine the director on set with a megaphone, the cinematographer framing the perfect shot, or the editor crafting a narrative rhythm.
However, the reality for most professionals in the industry is that this is a business first and an art form second.
Talent is obviously necessary, but it is rarely sufficient for longevity. Many gifted individuals leave the industry not because they lack skill, but because they neglect the operational side of their careers.
I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way in over two decades of filmmaking. Practical experience often teaches harsher and more valuable lessons than any classroom.
The strategies for survival are unglamorous and rooted in discipline. They focus on how you manage your time, how you handle your money, and how you deal with people. In this article I’ll share nine important things I know and practice. I’ve tried my best to keep things practical. If you find even one of my strategies beneficial, that’s all that matters.
This is not legal, financial or business advice. Everything in this document is provided for information purposes only. You are responsible for your own actions.
9 Time is money. Money is not time.
If you kill one hour of your day, and that hour could have netted you $10, you will have lost $45,000 in ten years.
Money comes and goes. Time only goes, and it doesn’t need your permission for that. When you kill time, you’re not killing “time”, but killing “your time”. You’re also killing all the opportunities that you could have taken advantage of if you hadn’t turned the other way.
Overly dramatic? It’s your call. After all, it’s your time. It’s as valuable or as useless as you want it to be.
Here’s an example from my personal life, from about a decade ago. I need to lose about 40 lbs. Most people advised me to hit the gym and go on a diet. My doctor advised Yoga.
I did neither.
What did I do? I bought the most expensive jumping rope I could find and the most expensive training shoes I could find. Everyone thinks I wasted money. “Why don’t you walk, or jog, or go to the gym like regular people?”
Well, here’s why:
- It would have taken me 15 minutes to shower and dress up for gym.
- It would have taken me 15 minutes of walking to the gym, and back. That’s 30 minutes.
- I’d spend at least an hour and a half at the gym, sometimes more, depending on who’s next to me at the treadmill.
- I’d have to pay a yearly gym membership, or at least 6 months’ worth to lose those pounds at a steady rate.
- I’d have to buy good gym clothes to ‘blend in’.
Time: 135 minutes (2.5 hours). Cost: $300 for 6 months – $240 for the gym membership and $70-100 for Nike trainers or running shoes.
Here’s what I did:
- I got ready, in my old gym clothes, in about five minutes.
- I jumped rope – 30 minutes. I watched something relevant or motivational, or Youtube, a movie or anime.
- I cooled down for 10 minutes.
Time: 45 minutes. Cost: $100 for 6 months – $20 for the Nike jumping rope and $70-100 for Nike running shoes.
3 hours in the gym with some networking opportunities, or 45 minutes plus learning? If the networking idea sounds like a plan you still have 90 minutes freed up to network the hell out of your fellow citizens, and give them your full attention. Can’t do that in the gym unless you want to waste even more time.
By the way, I lost 22 pounds in less than three months. And I used the extra time I saved to make some money. Even at $10 an hour, 90 minutes saved is $75 a week (assuming a 5-day workout), which is $1,800 in 6 months or $3,600 a year.
That’s how I get things done, including writing for this blog and making YouTube videos – I’ve been doing it like clockwork over 10 years.
Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote about his struggles in the bodybuilding days. He would hang out with his friends, and they would insist he share a burger with them. “How’s eating a burger this one time going to hurt you?” Arnold couldn’t explain it to them, and they took offense. He went on to win Mr. Olympia seven times, was the highest paid actor in the 90s, and then become Governor of California.
Would could you accomplished if you saved 1.5 hours every day? Could you make that many more phone calls to prospects, or meeting producers or directors or whatever? Could you spend that time putting together more emails? Could you spend that time learning new skills? Or could you spend that extra time with your family?
Become a clock. You can’t? Consider this:
- Soldiers must take up their posts on the dot.
- Transport workers must be ready when their customers are.
- Flight schedules only have a delta of a few minutes.
- Farmers must be ready when the seasons hit.
- Fishermen must sail through rough waters to where the fish are.
- Politicians must travel to where the voters are.
- Your favorite sportsperson must perform their greatest play when you want it, not when they feel like it.
Please don’t tell me it’s hard. What did you expect – you’ll send out a few DMs and exchange that for cash?
Lesson – Spend more money to make time. Use that time to make even more money.
8 Listen to Sun Tzu
In wartime, prepare for peace. In peacetime, prepare for war.
From Art of War
In other words, you always stay busy. To stay afloat in water you’ve got to keep flapping. In other words, it’s called hustling. A major client dropped me. I’ve dropped many vendors and freelancers who took me or my business for granted. It happens to everybody, sometimes for unavoidable reasons.
When you’re out of luck and no clients are returning your calls, it’s time to hustle. When you have more projects than you can handle, make time (did you forget that already?) and hustle.
You must not coast, ever. A businessperson must always be like Mohammed Ali – on their toes.
I must confess this is one of my weakest points. All I ever wanted to do is make good movies. Trust me, I know what it feels like – it’s hard for a lot of filmmakers. After all, if you were naturally inclined to hustle, you’d be doing something else instead.
Hustling is hard. Picking up the phone and cold calling is hard. Delivering an elevator pitch is hard. Taking rejection is hard.
If you’re an introvert like me put yourself in a situation where the clients come to you. Try meeting them on non-business (in other words, social) terms. Join a business club, become a Toastmaster, volunteer for a charity, whatever it takes.
The idea is to start surrounding yourself with positive people who will force you out of your comfort zone.
Lesson – Always be hustling. Only stop when you’re closing shop.
7 Watch the Discovery Channel
Watch tigers hunt. Sometimes they get their prey, but not always.In a split second, they have to decide which road to take, and they don’t bring out their calculators or slide presentations or accountants to tell them which. It happens instinctively. It’s so critical for them to get it right. Failure means starvation.
Your intuition is seriously powerful. Sometimes the alarm bells go off. Then I’m out of a meeting. Sometimes I know instinctively this project is just right, and I follow my instinct.
However, there are times when my intuition goes “ah…mm…I don’t know…” – and this is when I perk up. I realize I’m in unchartered waters here, and I’d better get out of my comfort zone and figure this out. No decisions must be made without the consent of your intuition.
This will help sharpen it over time. It is experience that makes you wise and keeps you on your toes.
I can only say this: discomfort is NOT pain. Scared of calling a client? It’s not pain, just discomfort. Awkward conversation with somebody? Discomfort.
Recognize discomfort. What if you just pulled through it? We’ve all experienced uncomfortable events in our lives, and we’ve survived so far, right? When has discomfort killed anybody?
Lesson – You can’t listen to an intuition you don’t have.
6 How I became an assistant director for the very first time
This one is an anti-climax, but is so typical.
About 15 years ago (I’ve lost count) most of the major production companies making commercials were housed in one studio complex. That was convenient, and I was desperate.I printed out three hundred resumes, and carried them in. Now imagine me walking down the corridor, knocking or ringing on every door, just like a door-to-door salesman.Most of the time the right person wasn’t in. I’d drop my resume anyway and move on, knowing full well it’ll be in the trash without being read.
Some people are rude. “May I drop in my resume?” “No, we don’t accept them.” “Is there a better time I can retur–” “No!” “Is there someone–” – they’re no longer listening.I smile, and show myself out. This exact sequence happened many times. I went through every single door in the complex, and there were hundreds of them and I lost count. I finally reached the very last corridor, and this office looked like it had some activity. I was hungry, and wanted to get out of there.I knocked, and a man said “Open!” I opened, but didn’t step in (I was used to being rejected).“Are you looking for an assistant director?” (My exact words).
“All the time.” said the man (His exact words).“Is it okay if I dropped in my resume?” (What a dumb reply to a cocky opening).He took it, and I turned away to leave.“Wait, you’re already here, so we might as well take your interview.”
I was tired, sweaty and really not in the mood. “Sure.”Someone else took the interview. “Do you know editing?” “Sure, I know Adobe Premiere.” (I have been using Premiere since 2002).She shouted across to the other guy at the door: “Did you hear that, he knows editing and Adobe Premiere!”At this point I thought I’d said “assistant editor” instead of “assistant director”. I was so tired I couldn’t remember what I said.Before I could clarify, they said: “Okay, you’re hired. When can you start?”“Right now.”“Okay, hang around…”And that was that. Silly, but wouldn’t have gone down the way it did if I hadn’t knocked on all the other doors first and landed in that spot at the right time.
Life is anti-climactic. You have to ask a hundred people beforeone says yes. Rejection is not something to get disheartened about. We’re not in the video business, we’re in the rejection business.There are more rejections and dejections than there are projects, and there are more projects than there are payments. If you make peace with this, you’ll have the strength to move on from anything.
There’s actually a formula to this. Ready?
- Call everyone, get rejected.
- Call everyone a second time, a few might meet you but they’ll still reject you.
- Call everyone again, and some more will meet you. One or two won’t reject you, but they won’t commit either.
- Call everyone again. Somebody from last month calls back, and you have a meeting. You pitch. You’re rejected.
- Email everyone but you’re warned for spam. You have to call them again. Halfway through somebody from the second month calls back with a job. It’s low paying. You don’t hear the amount. You say “yes, of course.”
- The “client” makes your life hell, but you don’t mind because: Anything to not call everyone again, right? The project doesn’t interest you. The client’s jokes are borderline punishable by death. They boast about not paying other people, “but you’ll be paid on time, don’t worry.”
- Your intuition (the one you got from watching tigers on Discovery) is screaming for you to get the hell out. But you persist. Just when you thought the job was over, you suddenly realize you have to continue hustling this client – to get paid.
- You call everyone, and call the client you still owes you money.
- Calls, meetings. It’s all a blur. Somebody sees your work. They’ll take a chance on you, but only if you’ll do it at a ‘string me up and whip me to death’ price. Of course, you’ll be more than happy to be put through that experience. Anything to get paid at this point.
- You do the best job you possibly could, while keeping hopes up, and this client pays (Also you were smart enough to ask for an advance). You pay the rent. Finally, the other client relents, and pays 80% of the contract. He knows you won’t go after the remaining 20%, because it’ll cost you more time and money to get it out of him.
Now, you have some money, and some breathing space, and no clients.
It’s not that bad. The more you work, and the more you network, things will improve. In a few years you might have your own office. You’ll have more clients than you can handle. You won’t forget how hard it was, because it will never get easier. What happens is you got tougher.
Lesson – Persist. Survive. Keep going on. Listen to this dude’s advice:
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
5 Extreme research
When comic book heroes go toe to toe, you compare their superpowers. Superman can out-punch the Hulk; Spiderman can out-swing Batman; and Jerry will outrun Tom.
My superpower is extreme research. It’s the thing you do so you know which path to take. It works like this:
- Collect data.
- Organize data and make some sense out of it.
- Reject data that is a waste of time.
- Reject more data, and then some more.
- Arrive at a handful of data that you want to act upon.
- Collect more data on the handful of data you want to act upon.
- Rinse and repeat.
What you’ll have at the end is an extremely specific set of information that you can then put to good use. All the data and articles you see on this site and my YouTube videos are the result of meticulous research.After having done it for long, I’ve become faster and more efficient at it.Let’s say you want to start a corporate video business. There are thousands of industries and companies in my city alone (Mumbai). If I extend the area the number becomes unmanageable. The challenge is to start with a good list of prospects, and not shoot in the dark.
There’s this ‘thing’ in the corporate video business (or any film work for that matter): if you do one type of video you’ll get the same type of clients.If you do training videos you get more training videos. If you do music videos you get more music videos. Want to make feature films? Stop making every other kind of video!
Anyway, you collect data from companies, trends, industry and marketing reports. Make phone calls, prowl on Linkedin, Facebook, RocketReach, Lusha, whatever, until you discover the exact industries that offer the most profits. You want to make sure your future clients:
Pay well and on time.
Gave you a decent budget.
Have work that interests you personally, so it’s not boring.
Once you have this list, you start hustling. This is extreme research. It might take weeks, maybe months, depending on how ambitious you are.
Lesson – Before you walk into a single meeting, know everything about the company, the person and the business circumstances that will allow you to deliver the right pitch.
In case it isn’t obvious. Research, my friend, is just another form of hustling.
4 Flies around your head
This is the lesson where all the lessons we’ve looked at earlier make their presence felt.
If you’re a piece of chocolate lying on the street with flies circling around you, you should count yourself lucky for the attention.
In other words, you need to be comfortable with the discomfort of attention.
You always want to be in your client’s head. It’s called being top-of-mind. The moment the client has the urge to make a video; he or she must call you. How do you get them to do it?
Remember the number 9. Here’s how it works:
- It takes three interactions with a client for him or her to even register your presence (unless you are famous).
- Then, it takes three more interactions for the client to get interested in your existence.
- Finally, it takes three further interactions for a client to acknowledge your importance – but only as a player.
From then on, you’re allowed to hustle. That’s nine interactions. I read that in a book ages ago, but seems about right.
Next time you see a commercial for the first time, notice your reaction to it. Then, count how many times you’d have to see the commercial for you to finally remember it. Not the commercial, but the product. If all you remember is the commercial, then the agency has failed.
Here’s my system, step by step:
- Make time (lesson nine) to do –
- Extreme research (lesson five) about your clients to –
- Really get to know them (lesson seven) so –
- After a long period of hustle (lesson six) when you meet them they’ll think you’re one of them. It’s only then that they’ll even listen to what you have to say.
Sound too convoluted? Let me change your perspective on this. To a layperson, it looks like you’re setting up a meeting. So what’s the big deal, right?No, there’s a tremendous amount of effort involved to set up a meeting that you control. It’s like designing a shot or scene in a movie, and you have meticulously placed all the elements into the scene over weeks of effort, just for it to play right when the camera rolls. But some naive kid who walks into the set for the first time thinks it’s all too easy.
Lesson – Approach them nine times, at least. Then the game begins.
3 A preemptive strike
This is a tactic that only works sometimes. If you want to buy a Barbie doll for your niece, and the toy store says they have just one left in stock but a customer called them up a few minutes ago and said she’d be there on the double, what do you do?
You’ll rush to the store and buy the Barbie doll. This is a preemptive strike.
When you’re approaching bigger clients, be extremely well prepared. I used to sit on the opposite table, as a media buyer. Everyday I used to get calls and emails from newspapers, magazines, journals, television networks, radio stations, signage companies, video production companies, 3D animation companies, SMS and email marketing companies.I met the ones that approached our marketing mix, and I had to accept or reject quickly (they were smart, the offers were always time bound). I learnt very fast that I didn’t have to play their game. I could just sit back and watch them until somebody folded. The ones who wanted it the most (lesson six) always made the greatest impression.
It’s cruel. Welcome to the corporate world.They don’t blink an eye when they have to lay off 50,000 people, but they want your loyalty. As a video producer or filmmaker, you’re always on a lower rung to the guy who holds the purse strings, or at least that’s how they see it.They always want to believe it’s their show. All you have to do to get your way is, sustain that illusion.
People like to believe they are in control. You do too. When there are many egos in the room, someone has to take a back seat. Otherwise, nothing gets done. The producer or filmmaker is usually the loser.
Okay, so what has this got to do with a preemptive strike?
Just this: People are so busy listening to themselves in their head, that they don’t usually see what other people are doing. Even the wisest and most cunning of clients are more interested in their problems than your sales pitch.The easiest way to get their attention, then, is to give them what they want before they ask for it. If they already have the solution in hand, they don’t have to go through the pain of looking for it.
Imagine this. A product is back-ordered and you’ve called up all the stores and they’ve all put you on the waiting list. Suddenly one store calls you – they have the product in stock. Would you like it to be shipped? Would you ever!
Your client has to interview many individuals or businesses, spend hundreds of hours to decide with a vendor sometimes. How cool would it be for them if someone (you) called them up and said: “Listen, I’ve got your video done already. Want to see it?”
I’m not talking about your showreel. Everybody’s got that, and nobody wants to see it (even if they politely do). A smart client has seen hundreds of showreels. If nothing else they know AI exists. All they want to know is: Can you do their stuff?
Remember what I said about spending money to make time (lesson nine)? You save the client’s time, and you have a good chance of being rewarded for it.
If you’ve pitched for a job or a project, follow up and talk to the client. Show them your interest. Tell them you really want the project, and you’re the best person for the job. It’s all a part of the hustling game.But try to mean it. Don’t fake it. Experienced producers or businessmen can sniff a lie. If you’re an experienced camera person or editor wouldn’t you be able to smell a poser from a mile away? They can too.
Lesson – You fish with bait, not your favorite dessert.
2 Cash is king
The concept is simple. Every month, you must earn more than you spend that month.Cash flow is easy to calculate when you’re employed. You get paid on a certain date, and you just have to watch your expenses. As a business owner or freelancer, it’s a lot more complicated.You have late paying customers, bills due on various dates and schedules, incomes from various sources, different categories of accounts, admin and office duties, tax and compliance work, gray areas like ‘should this be in my business account or my personal account?’ and so on.
What if something happens to you? What if your gear is stolen? What if you have a bad patch and can’t get work or get paid no matter how hard you try? What if you want to learn a new skill but don’t have the time for it?
The smart thing to do is to know your strengths. If your core strength is business development, then delegate the actual shooting to someone else. If you are genius with the camera, then find someone to handle business development. Hire someone to take care of admin and accounts and payrolls.
Everyone has to spend. The people who fail are the ones who spend on the wrong things.If you’re weak in getting new clients or work don’t waste your money buying a new camera. If you can’t edit for shit don’t buy a new computer for editing. If your work is restricted to a small town or locality, don’t buy a car.
See where I’m going with this? Live within your means. Every successful business does, and so can you. If you can’t for whatever reason, it’s a strong signal to hire someone to do things you are not good at – or maybe the industry isn’t profitable at all.
Lesson – the primary job of every business is to sustain a positive cash flow.
1 Never underbid
I’m going to make this short and sweet. Never underbid, period.
By underbidding, you might win this project, but you will lose many projects in the future. At the very least you’ll get less and less money for future work, and that’s not good for your business. Large corporations like Amazon and Walmart can underprice because they sell incredible volume.Nothing in filmmaking is a volume game.
Look at any industry, there’s always a ‘common’ product and a ‘luxury’ product. See here:
- Airplanes: economy vs first
- Watches: Swatch vs Rolex
- Cameras: Nikon vs Arri
- Videos: Youtube vs Hollywood
- Commercials: Cheap corporate videos vs Super Bowl commercials
- Food: McDonalds vs The Oak Room
- Clothing: Rags vs Designer Wear
What do I recommend? I strongly urge you to overbid.
You would be surprised how much people are really willing to pay. I have been asked many times to lower my rates. I won’t lie and tell you I haven’t.
When I don’t though, they’re okay with that. If you walk into a store and try to bargain, and it doesn’t work out, nobody bears a grudge. It’s a game. It’s their duty to ask, and it’s your duty to say no!
Lesson – Know your value, and keep your price. You’ll get it eventually, and then you’ll probably cross it.
Well, that’s it! I hope you have found at least one of my ideas useful and practical. If any of this did resonate with you, let me know in the comments below.
Happy hunting!
