Rabiger Directing: Film Techniques & Aesthetics 4ed Part 8 Checklist Page 1

PART 8: CAREER TRACK

These stage by stage reminders should help you along. Derived from their chapters, they
may also reflect pertinent information from other parts of the book. To locate further
information, use either the Part’s table of contents or the index at the back of the book.

Chapter 45 Planning a Career

A. Choosing a school:
a. A good school can massively accelerate your career. 
b. Make joining a filmmaking community and finding your 
equals first, not the equipment.
c. Do however check out a school’s production facilities, its 
support for production, morale, and attitude toward non-star
students (the majority).
d. Check the current production activity of senior faculty and the 
experience of those teaching beginner classes.
B. What to expect and what to do:
a. No school can give you the energy, persistence, and drive to 
succeed—these are hard choices that you make daily.
b. You can’t avoid technical stuff, writing, or bouts of drudgery. 
c. Only self-starters succeed in freelance arts. 
d. Make use of the school and don’t hang about waiting to be 
recognized. You have to create an identity for yourself and
make yourself visible through energy and excellence.
e. Plan your future, break tasks down into steps, and set goals 
and deadlines for yourself. Inertia overtakes many just when
they could begin controlling their lives.
f. Leave your ego at the door. Make friends by seeking and 
using good advice, especially from active faculty.
C. Working with others:
a. Conventional wisdom in a student body is always full of 
negativity and doom—ignore it.
b. Learn to be creative from those with a positive attitude toward 
work, authority, and other students.
D. Planning ahead
a. Don’t kid yourself that you’re keeping your options open by 
avoiding craft specialization. You must leave film school with
saleable craft skills—either in production, camera, sound,
editing, production design, special effects, etc.
b. Aim to leave school with a reel of good and really varied 
work that evidences your skills and flexibility.
c. Your family cares that you get a degree, but the film industry 
cares only about exceptional work. This must be your focus.
d. Get all practical experience you can, and all possible industry 
references, so you can pump up your resumé.

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e. Excellent directing work, prizes to prove it, and a great script 

may get you into directing straightaway, but don’t expect it.
Prepare for a less dazzling destiny.

Chapter 47 Breaking into the Industry

A. After film school when you’re looking for work:
a. Send out a professional-looking resumé and a DVD reel of 
short clips from your best and most varied work. Follow up
with a politely insistent call asking for a chat.
b. Know where you want to work, who’s there, a d what they do. 
Keep trying; it often takes months or even years to get started.
c. You are what you have done, so don’t embarrass employers 
by overselling your abilities, importance, or potential.
d. The film industry assumes that the top rung of film school 
leads to the bottom rung of the film industry.
B. Making progress:
a. Film and video is always a small professional community, 
even in Hollywood. Good people get known the way they do
in a village—by everyone watching everyone else. Work well,
be a trooper, and you’ll come to be valued.
b. Most entering the film industry move s-l-o-w-l-y up through 
the freelance ranks and take several years to achieve regular
employment.
C. Strategies for advancement:
a. Think of starting in nonfiction to gain experience at 
authorship and in the world.
b. Your capital is your reliability, resourcefulness, and capacity 
for teamwork. Originality shows, if you have it.
c. Never stop expanding your mind in all the arts. 
d. Don’t believe in talent; believe in persistent self-development. 
e. Learn from others, especially from their mistakes (we all 
make them).
f. Learn how the funding circus works. 
g. Plug into all information sources and follow all trade 
information.
h. Avoid cynics. They’ll tell say the world is going to the dogs 
and that you will never succeed.
i. Know what you want. People only accomplish what matters to 
them.
j. Good things usually happen because of personal connections 
as well as merit.
k. Get proficient at networking. Anyone can get to anyone else in 
the world by five or fewer emails or phone calls.
l. Win the pro’s respect, affection, and help by earning it. There 
are many intelligent, kind, and responsible people in film who

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remember what it’s like starting out.

m. Most film people work on junk most of the time. Until 
someone genetically re-engineers mass taste, you will too.
n. Keep on writing, making short projects, and entering them in 
competitions and festivals.
o. The freelance life will exact a toll on your personal life. 
p. Believe in yourself and work with others who do so, too. 
q. Keep the faith. 

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