The guide

Film production

Arts & Design

Making moving-image work as a crew, not as a solo art form. Writing, shooting, editing and organising a production so a story actually gets finished, and finished on time.

This suits you if…

You can be genuinely useful in somebody else's crew role for a long stretch before directing anything of your own. Irregular, project-based income is something your circumstances can absorb for a few years, rather than something you are hoping to survive.

Look elsewhere if…

You pictured directing from early on, or you need steady income soon. Almost everyone starts in a crew role on someone else's production, and work is project by project with real gaps between paid jobs. Animation offers a more solitary, less crew-dependent route into moving-image work, if that suits you better.

What this subject actually is

You will also see it called

Film studies · Film and television production · Media productionThe same subject, under a different department in a different country. Search for all of them.

What the first year is really made of

Nobody hands a first-year student a camera and a script. Early productions cast you into crew positions on someone else's project: holding a boom, logging footage, running continuity. It's often a full term or more before you direct anything of your own. That doesn't match the prospectus photographs of students behind cameras. A parallel course in production management and budgeting surprises people who signed up purely for the creative side. It's usually that unglamorous, procedural half that thins the class out.

The catch

Work in the industry is project by project. You are hired for a production and then it ends, so income is irregular, and unpaid or barely-paid early work is common while you build a reputation. The industry also clusters in a small number of expensive cities. Far more people want to direct than the market will ever pay to let direct.

What to do about it now

The school subjects that actually matter

A finished short film or edited video you made yourself, however small
English
Media studies where offered

What admissions screens on, and what the first year assumes you already have. The only thing on this page you can start today.

Where it leads

Kinds of work this opens

A list, not a prediction. Most people in these jobs did not study exactly this, and most people who study this end up doing something the list does not name.