"How do I become a music video director? How did you get into this? Whose door do I knock on? That's not the right way to think about it. You should really just grab a camera and shoot stuff and wait till it's good enough for people to notice."
Being exposed to first hand knowledge and advice from those also on the filmmaking journey is vitally important when it comes to developing your craft, regardless of how far along in your career you are -- it's pretty much this ethos which saw our very own Koo put out the DSLR Cinematography Guide. As last month's Fidgit Box interview with William McGregor demonstrated, advice from a peer can be of more practical use than the wisdom gleaned from cinema's master practitioners as it often contains insights you can put into practice here and now, as opposed to filing it away for that elusive day when you direct your first multi-million dollar feature. Episode 1 of the new documentary web series The Videographers Guide aims to share this type of knowledge through its interviews with working music video directors:
The brainchild of Trevor Bayack, a filmmaker and founder of The New Pop, The Videographers Guide began life as the 19 part blog series The Videographers Guide to Not Falling on your New Media Face, with Bayack deciding to eschew the original's personal style and instead replace it with the voice of industry experts, thereby creating much more of a practical video tutorial series.
Although focussed on music promos, much of the advice here is relevent regardless of your specific film bent. However, if promos really aren't your bag, it's worth noting that Bayack plans to feature a wide range of filmmakers in the series down the road.
The Videographers Guide is a documentary web series where we document young filmmakers as they produce short videos for the web in a variety of genres. We want to pull back the veil that shrouds the new media landscape by providing valuable information from other filmmakers who are on the front lines. The goal is to present this information in a compelling, stylistic way that is as informative as it is entertaining.
Episode 2, Events, is due to drop early 2013, but in the meantime the team are at work on getting the Videographers Guide Collectors Edition handbook out in time for the holidays.
We already asked about your favorite filmmaking sites this week, so it seems only prudent to inquire what your favourite tutorial series are?
Link: The Videographers Guide
