CHASING THE HOLLYWOOD DREAM

December 12th, 2016

Hi.  My name is Josh.  I Make Movies.  And I’ve been working in the Film Industry for the last 5 Years.

My area of expertise is in post-production, specifically Editing.  I  spent four years studying it in film school before moving to Los  Angeles.  I chose editing because I knew that’s where the jobs were, and  because I was good at it.  Sure enough, I found work here, in my area  of study (editing), and have been busy ever since.

My goal, and my dream, over the last 5 years has always been the  same: Work On Movies.  The Big Ones.  Star Wars.  Star Trek.  I could go  on, but you get the idea.  That is my dream, and my patience was  tested.  Over the years, I accepted many different types of editing /  post-production jobs at many different companies, most notably Reality  Television.  That’s the secret to how I paid my bills as I continued to  search for the jobs I really wanted but could never find.  I hated  Reality, and I was loosing hope.  I was starting to doubt whether I  would ever find the job of my dreams.  Then, finally, Destiny came  knocking in my greatest time of need…

Through a connection from my old film school, I was offered my very  first opportunity on a big budget feature film, called The Great Wall,  at the major film company, Legendary.  If only I had found this job all  those years ago when I first moved to LA, but it took me all this time  to build the strong network of contacts needed to get here.

The secret to finding these jobs is WHO you know, not WHAT you know.   That’s it.  It’s that simple.  If you don’t KNOW someone who works on  these types of movies, you’ll very likely NEVER find a way in.  I spent  years looking for jobs on online job websites (Entertainment Careers,  StaffMeUp, etc.), only to discover I was looking in the wrong places,  and going about it completely wrong.  What I learned is I needed to  reach out to specific PEOPLE, via their direct email addresses, in order  to start finding these types of opportunities.  Once I started doing  that, and changing my approach to how I found work, the opportunities  started coming.

I have learned so much on my path to getting here, and I’ll share  more of that in many blog posts to come, but for now I’ll leave it at  that.

Want to work in the film industry?  Making the move to LA?  Don’t  know anyone?  Learn from my 5 years of trial and errors, and save  yourself the time: DON’T apply to online job ads (unless you are ok with  getting trapped in the never ending circle of Reality Television and /  or Trailer House and / or Internet Video jobs), and start REACHING OUT  to as many people who work on the types of big Movies and / or TV Shows  as you possibly can.  How do you find their emails, you might ask?  Good  question.  The answer is IMDB Pro.  No, it’s not free, but for $20 per  month, it’s worth it, to start opening doors to your career.