As per usual, here’s an excerpt from Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein which ties into the upcoming post about emails. The book’s about a Jewish reporter assigned to the police beat in Tokyo and it’s a great read.

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The following is a memo that a former supervisor once wrote to us reporters on the police beat. It offers great insight into the amount of schmoozing and massaging involved in our job. I will say that the guy who wrote it is an excellent reporter who is willing to do real work to get a story rather than rely on the kindness of cops he’d done favors for. Be that as it may, the man is also a brownnoser without equal.

A Memo to Whom It May Concern

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IFP producer’s conference went really well. We’re trying to learn more about the business side of the industry and hearing about the collapse of distribution models for independent film was disheartening/exciting. They had a networking get-together afterwords, and the film festival had a “film schmooze” today that we also went to, which is why I wanted to make an add-on to the networking post I made previously.

First, I want to reiterate that these things are essential for filmmakers like us who are just starting out. We’ve found out that Minneapolis has a bigger film community than we thought, but really, if you’re a student and you can’t find the motivation to go to a film panel with a networking party afterward (which is what it was today), then maybe you should reconsider your options. Motivation is key here, and with the student discounts that are often offered, they’re practically free.

So, networking yesterday and today made me remember why it can be so hard for people starting out. Usually these things happen after some kind of big event, like a panel or conference. Let’s say there are five panelists coming to the party, as well as fifty people who attended the event and are also at the party. A lot of the people are going to want to talk to these VIPs so you’ve got the difficult situation of working your way over to them, assuming you want to talk to them, as well as general networking with other people. What makes things awkward, at least for us, is that you usually don’t know anybody in the room personally so you have to find a way to ingratiate yourself with other people and introduce yourself, or just hope somebody recognizes you from somewhere else.

Remember, nobody wants to talk to the guy standing by himself. We’re lucky since we can at least look like we’re talking with each other, and the twin thing makes it easier for us to network because it’s uncommon in the industry and makes us easier to remember. That said, my piece of advice is to bring a wingman/woman if you’re by yourself, and if you’re a student, never shy away from asking to meet up with people if they’re in town. Just be nice about it and if they see you’re motivated they’ll usually be happy to do it.

Last thing. I should say that the advice that we’re giving out here stems from our experiences outside of the industry, mostly from our experiences abroad as well as from the people we’ve met so far. Really, this stuff is more useful for the aspiring filmmakers like us, and if any of the industry people we’ve met are reading this, hopefully you’ll get a laugh out of it.

Right now we’re gearing up to shoot our next short this weekend. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do all of it within a day or two, as it’s pretty simple and should only be around two minutes long, but we’ll see. We’ll also be attending an independent producer’s conference that our local IFP chapter is having. It’s a full day event with speeches about getting funding and distribution today. There’s also a reception at the end which is probably where a lot of meetings and deals will go down.

And here we come to the subject of this post: networking.

Everything you’ve heard about how the film industry is all about networking and who you know aren’t lying. It’s always tough to break in, and even moreso now. One person we talked to said that he’s never hired anybody cold, that is without somebody knowing the applicant. Depending on where you live, this can be pretty easy or maddeningly difficult. One of the worst things you can do if you want to work in film is to be nervous and shy from talking to people. You can’t expect to merely put out your work and hope people notice you. It’s somewhat easy to do it on the internet now but physical meetings are always preferred.

So, before Nick and I went to NZ, we barely had any contacts within the industry. Through our art teacher we were able to work at the AnimfxNZ conference in Wellington, handling registration and basically being runners. That year (08), they had a ton of great speakers like the VP of Production for Disney, an animator on The Jungle Book, and the Director of Feature Assets at Universal. Now, at this time we were still pretty shy and nervous. As Wisconsin doesn’t really have a thriving film industry, this was a big opportunity to actually talk about the industry with people who worked in it.

We were able to talk to a few people during the conference and they were nice enough to let us keep in contact with them, but we were still jonesing to talk to more of the VIPs. On the last day they threw a party for everyone, and we went without really expecting anything. During the conference we met and became friends with James Everett, who was/is a designer for Sidhe Interactive, and at the party he noticed that we weren’t really talking to anybody so he took it upon himself to introduce us to people. This started a chain reaction where we tried to talk to as many people as we could and by the end of the night, we had made more contacts and gotten some sweet business cards.

The point here is that you need to put yourself out there and talk to people. People in the industry know what it’s like to start out and they’re (usually) very happy to help out. While we were running the registration table, a producer noticed that we had American accents and after we talked for a bit (she was American), we exchanged contact details. After the conference, I sent out a wave of emails to people just asking for advice on going to grad school for film. A lot of people responded, but just as an example, the producer got back to me and said we should discuss it over coffee. An email later it changes to “Why don’t you come by the office and we can show you some stuff we’re working on and talk about grad school?” Fast forward a year-and-a-half and she’s become one of our best contacts.

Let everybody know what you want to do and I guarantee that somebody will know somebody who can help you out. We never took a class with the art teacher who got us in to Animfx. While we were in high school, he’d heard that we wanted to be filmmakers and we just kept in touch after that. This also ties into proper email etiquette, but that’s a topic for another post. Also, half of networking is having the nerve to go up and talk to people. The other half is actually getting to these things, hence why we’re going to this producer’s conference thing. If you’re like us and living in the midwest somewhere, these things don’t happen very often and if you’re serious about getting into the industry, you owe it to yourself to get in to these things. Motivation is everything here.

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Also, we put up some of the B-Roll footage we shot for a documentary during our studies in NZ.