I Turned Down a Feature Length
10 years ago I would’ve told you that I had absolutely no interest in relocating to Los Angeles (LA) to pursue a career in the feature length film industry. To this day, I’m still not convinced that it’s the right move for me to move to LA, but the thought has definitely floated through my mind over the years. Two major factors that influence my decision to avoid LA is that the market is heavily saturated and it’s primarily a narrative world while I’m a commercial cinematographer.
I’ve recently befriended a cinematographer that relocated from LA to Portland and their day rate literally doubled. Wait, how can that be - isn’t LA where massive multi-billion dollar productions are made? Yes, LA is the mecca of narrative filmmaking but this means that many people move there to chase a dream and struggle to make ends meet. If I’m a fresh out of school camera operator trying to make it in LA, of course I’d take a lower rate to work on larger productions and build connections. It’s simple economics, there’s a high supply of talent with only so many jobs to go around (low demand), which results in lower rates.
Wait, did you mention a feature length?
I was recently contacted by an aspiring director, they wanted to meet for tea and talk about a potential collaboration. Turns out that they found me on the Oregon Media Production Association (OMPA) website and they selected me out of the other cinematographers because they felt like they could connect with my personality after spending time on my blog. That’s awesome ~ my blog and video content is working!
I’ve never worked on content as long or audacious as a feature length. The director said we’d be filming for 22 days straight in the summer, which is way longer than most commercial projects I work on. The only project that even came close was a commercial series I filmed for the University of Washington which was 15 days of production spread out over the course of a couple months.
Well, I turned down the feature length opportunity but it should be said that this was a tougher decision for me than I had anticipated. There are a myriad of factors at play here like how they were working with a shoestring budget or that the summer is one of my most profitable times and 22 days of production would drastically cut down on other profitable opportunities, but above all I’m simply not interested in pursuing narrative film at the moment. The narrative world has longer hours with longer production commitments and I have thoroughly enjoyed the commercial lifestyle of wrapping up projects in under a week or two of hard work. Time commitments aside, I mostly struggle with the question of, “how much of an impact can I really make working on a feature length?” Sure, there are impactful feature length films that affect society’s culture but there’s also an incredible amount of short form content that constantly shows up in our newsfeeds and shapes how we empathize with others.
If I was truly interested in a feature length career, this would have been a dream opportunity. I know that some people won’t enjoy hearing that I turned down this project but it’s not my dream and I think it’s critical to stay true to yourself. If the right opportunity comes knocking I may be interested in buckling down and pursuing a feature length down the line but for now I am very happy with my shorter form content because I feel like I am making more of an impact.
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