Thanks for the advice Adam. It makes sense what you’re saying and If I'm been honest I've told the same to myself. I'm starting to now offering my services on editing, commercial work and have offered to do my sister’s wedding for free whilst now looking to work on my own stuff as well as others. I think the sitting around looking for clients is a hard enough job so using the formula and advice you've given seems like the best advice out there. Here's to the both of us, I wish you luck in your own career path as well. Kind Regards
I’d like to introduce myself as James who is new to the site.
I’m a film maker who has several years of experience who’s worked alongside others in the past and has decided to go freelance after taking a few years off due to a family loss.
I am wondering if other freelance film makers would kindly give me some advice on starting out again.
Presently I have been advised by several independent bodies to do free work to build upon a film reel to represent my skills and to seek future paying clients. I’ve also at the same time been advised not to do free work as it damages your reputation and skills as people would expect another free job in the future.
I have tried several times to advertise free work such as show reels for actors, short films, advertisement videos for local businesses, music and wedding video’s however I’ve had no luck getting clients to do free material for.
I’ve also tried the £250 pound a day rate which would include the editing of a film to be edited into a 5min short but again I’m finding it difficult to locate clients.
Having asked around, and have had several different answers, the most have been that doing free work implies that you have no skills and also that charging £250 is under cutting myself.
So my question is, has anyone had to deal with this in the past, and if so how did you get clients at the start.
I am happy to do free work or cheap work in order to build up my website to show potential clients my work and to get paid for what I do.
Again I do have the skills but need to prove them online in order to get paid.
I really appreciate the advice given and wish you all luck with your own careers and future
Hello there, I'm looking for some advice on how to handle this.
I'm a film maker who's setting out to build up his own production company whilst starting to do wedding videos to pay the bills whilst I am building up my film company. I do have the skills for film and have worked on production so have the skills in place to move over to part time wedding video productions. I'm presently building up a film reel for wedding videos, and have said to my sister who's getting married in January that I would do the wedding for free if I could use it online to promote myself.
This was Ok with her and I informed her that I would be there filming the entire wedding, then I’d go away and edit the video into 5-8min production and I would create this for free.
She did offer me £50pound towards my accommodation as I would be traveling three hours by train to get there and as I don't have much money to do so.
Anyway, at the moment, she still would like me to do the video, however she and her partner don't want it uploaded or put onto DVD to show anyone which sort of pushes the getting noticed aside as nobody will see it. The reasons given for this are were that the people attending wouldn’t want to be up on the internet and that her kids would be on the video which I understand. However I stated that I could password protect the video on my website so that only clients could access it, and that the password would be changed weekly. She later stated that this was ok and then changed her mind and even didn’t want it on DVD.
However she consistently ad’s photos and video's via Facebook of her kids and will post up the wedding photos as well so I'm rather thinking she's pulling the blind over my eyes.
I do understand in some ways, but also at the same time feel that the amount of time investing in a wedding video regardless if its family or a stranger for free without any future clients seeing it is wrong.
Has anyone been in this situation before? And if so how did you deal with it?
I’m not sure on free work at this point as this seems to be a trend in doing free services and not getting anything back.
