The next step – making contact

I feel I’m at the stage with my videography where I need to get involved in project where I have the ability to work with and hopefully learn from a team of like minded people who want to make a short film. Trying to make this step however is proving to be particularly tricky, mostly it seems, because I don’t live in London.

I subscribed to Shooting People, which is an old fashioned bulletin board type service whereby you receive an email each day which is an aggregate of members emails to the service announcing positions available on projects and other general communications.

Most of the positions that come up are unpaid, or just covering expenses, which is not a huge problem for me at the moment as I’m just interested in getting experience and working with other people. The bigger problem though is that most of the projects are London based. London is a 3 – 4 hr journey from here and as a one car family with children at school I do not have the option of disappearing into the smoke for 2 – 3 days at a time. I’m also quite apprehensive about doing my first project in London.

After a couple of months failing to find any projects closer to home I decided to try and seek the help of local organisations. My first port of call was Screen East who I emailed explaining my position. I got an email back yesterday suggesting that I go along to some events which are being organised next year where I’m likely to meet other like minded people.

This stage of my adventure is particularly worrying, even though I now feel confident in my ability to get good results with my camera and I’ve developed an eye for a good shot, I still have absolutely no experience in working with a crew and I’m fearful about getting involved in a project where people would expect I know what I’m doing when it comes to making films.

I really don’t know what lays ahead at the moment, but I’m in no doubt that I need to move on to the next stage in my videography adventure whatever it may bring.