Explainer 06
There is no single route in, which is bad news if you wanted a map and good news if the usual one was never open to you.
Seven routes are real and in regular use: trainee schemes, runner and entry grades, film school, apprenticeships, making your own work, crossing over from an adjacent trade, and lateral entry from a different career later in life.
Every one ends in the same place — somebody who knows what they are doing being willing to recommend you. They differ only in what they cost you, how long they take, and who they are realistically open to.
The seven
What each route costs, who it suits, and the odds
Route 01
Trainee schemes, and what you are applying for
Hiring runs on recommendation, so a trainee scheme is a manufactured recommendation: an organisation with standing tells a head of department you are worth a place, and carries some of the risk of being wrong. That is the product. The training is the delivery mechanism.
Where to look
ScreenSkills, the BFI Film Academy, craft associations in camera, lighting, grip, sound and production, regional screen agencies, and the training pages of individual broadcasters and studios.
What they want to see
Not a showreel and not a degree. Evidence that you understand what the job is, that you will turn up, and that somebody has seen you behave professionally in a working environment.
How to be ready when one opens
A one-page CV, two people who will vouch for you, a clear answer to “why this department”, and one experience of a working unit that is not your own short film.
And apply repeatedly
Almost nobody gets the first scheme they apply for. The people who get in are frequently the ones who applied three times and got visibly better each time.
Route 02
Four different runner jobs, leading to four different careers
Runner is not one job. It is the entry grade in four separate parts of the industry, and the one you take largely decides what you become.
Runner work is paid work: a low rate for long hours, and it should still be a rate.
Routes 03 and 04
Study and apprenticeships, which are not interchangeable
Postgraduate film school
Small groups, serious equipment, time to fail, tutors with credits. Its greatest asset is the people: the ones you make work with become the ones who hire you for the next fifteen years.
High cost
Undergraduate degrees
Enormously variable. Ask one specific question before enrolling: which department does this course place people into, and how many, last year?
Check carefully
Apprenticeships
Paid employment with structured training, funded by the apprenticeship levy. Harder to run in an industry of short engagements, but real — particularly in post, VFX, production and broadcast — and consistently under-applied for.
Underused
No degree at all
Completely normal. A large share of working crew in every craft department entered without one, and no head of department has ever asked to see a certificate before a shooting day.
Normal
Study pays off most in editing, sound design, visual effects, animation, production design, screenwriting and producing, which all reward sustained time and feedback. Camera, lighting, grip and the standby crafts are learned on units instead.
If an organisation is charging you a significant fee and its main promise is access to contacts, treat that as a warning. Recommendation is earned through work and it is not a product that can be sold to you.
Route 06
Crossing over: if you hold a trade, you are changing sector rather than starting again
The most under-told route into the screen industries and frequently the fastest. Productions need qualified trades constantly, and the departments that employ them are the largest on any unit. What you lack is not skill. It is knowledge of how a set works, and one person willing to recommend you.
Nobody on a set will ask your age. Below the line the industry cares about competence, availability and temperament, and it hires people in their forties and fifties into entry and mid grades regularly.
This month
Four things, none of which require anybody’s permission.
01
Choose a department, provisionally
Not a job title for life. A direction, so your next choice can be deliberate rather than whatever appeared first.
02
Learn the language and the shape of a day
The vocabulary and the chain of command are the two cheapest barriers to remove on this whole site, and both take an afternoon.
03
Get onto one working unit in any capacity
A simulation, a student shoot, a community film, a workshop day with real crew. One experience of a real chain of command changes how you talk about the work.
04
Put yourself on the lists and apply to everything open
Craft associations, crew directories, every trainee scheme you are eligible for, and the entry grades at rental houses and post facilities.
Next
Start from the grade, not from the job title you have heard of.
The Careers A–Z takes every department apart into grades and tells you what each one does, what it is paid to be good at, and every route into it. If cost is the thing standing in your way, say so first rather than last.
