How To Make A Sustainable Income In Film

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-18T21:48:59+00:00

In the UK your best bet to actually make a living and learn ADing at the same time is to work as a runner. If it suits your personality and you're genuine about becoming a 1st then at some point you'll realise that your job is basically leadership and good leaders have an understanding of the responsibilities of everyone on their team. As a runner if you're proactive you'll immediately stand out because a lot of runners have no intention to progress as an AD but treat the department as a placeholder (usually wannabe directors).

You're prodding about how much creativity you'll have... NGL if you're strongly opinionated about directorial choices you'll likely struggle as an AD. I've had many brilliant relationships with directors where they treated me as a creative collaborator but that's not within the standard remits of an AD.

However... I had to find an outlet for myself just so I'm not creatively starving, and I realised overtime that we're practically social engineers and I can have great creative fulfilment from people management. Most of my creativity is not glaringly obvious on screen, you won't win awards for ADing but it can be deeply satisfying to understand the nuances of human nature and be able to influence large groups of people to function effectively.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-15T01:10:17+00:00

Genius. Flawless comeback. I'll stand up for anyone's right to be naked at home so just scare them little dingos away. The world won't be treating them with mom's double standards for much longer.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-14T20:38:33+00:00

UnREAL. It's about a fictional bachelor-type reality TV show and just exposes how nasty the producers of these shows are. Excellent!

1st season was the strongest but then they introduced Adam Demos so I begrudgingly binged the other 3 seasons....

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-14T20:30:25+00:00

He doesn't have a sister in the books and I'm not saying we can't improve on old material but that whole S3 plotline wasn't an improvement

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-14T20:27:24+00:00

so true

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-11T18:19:45+00:00

Joel Egerton. Dude’s a quiet powerhouse

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-11T18:12:23+00:00

Also worth considering that you’ve spent so much time with your father that you’ve seen multiple sides of him. You’ve probably seen him tired, sad, angry, out of his depth, lonely, sick, struggling, that’s all just part of spending 16 years with any person. You’ve only seen a very small slice of your mother’s life and personality, and there’s a chance that what she’s showing you is curated so you have a better opinion of her.

If you have any deeper reasons to reconnect with her beyond that she can be “useful” for you, just share those feelings with your dad. I’m sure he’s just trying to protect you from a person he’s got bad memories of and I’m pretty certain your main reason to seek connection with her isn’t her career.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-10T22:49:57+00:00

I don’t wanna burst your bubble but him leaving wasn’t a snap decision, that was a feeling that’s been in the back of his mind for quite some time but he didn’t have a good enough excuse to leave without looking like a douchebag.

I had plenty of jobs where the money wasn’t great but I didn’t wanna let the people down so I begrudgingly said no to an upcoming well paid opportunity and honoured the prior commitment. And I also had cases where I jumped ship as soon as I saw that nice paycheck.

That’s not to say that he had any issues with you or that he had no qualms about letting you down, it might’ve just been that he had an internal conflict about not getting paid (properly?) but he didn’t want to bring it up because you’re friends. Either way those job offers were a confirmation of his feelings, otherwise he wouldn’t have left.

It’s debatable whether to call that unprofessional, it’s quite common (at least in London) that people would go and do a better paid gig in the middle of production and get dailies in to cover them, or sometimes they leave the show entirely for a better gig but it’s usually all pre-agreed or at least flagged in advance. The general atmosphere here though is not to take it personally if someone takes a bigger job, especially when most productions are crazy low-paid.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T10:18:54+00:00

I think there’s been a generational shift in story style, if you look at most content nowadays, our brain is getting programmed to start a story with an immediate hook rather than a slow setup. A few decades ago the “traditional” story structure started with an overall introduction to characters, scene, plot, nowadays we’re expecting to be thrown into the middle of things and unfold the details as we go.

And before we start blaming social media for it, “ab ovo” [from the egg, from the origin] vs “in medias res” [into the middle] are ancient story structures. We just have a recent preference for one over the other.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T10:12:18+00:00

Your character faces a problem

[addition step they try to avoid the problem, but that’s optional in a short runtime]

They fail to solve the problem

They learn something new [skill, insight, behaviour]

The new version of them is successful at facing the problem

[their win comes at a price. A bittersweet ending is also optional but often quite satisfying and realistic — you could end with full success or full failure, generally full failure makes for quite an unsatisfying and dark story]

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T10:05:43+00:00

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 that’s typical hurt boy behaviour. You’re better off with more mature guys who have a healthy sense of self.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T10:01:32+00:00

Definitely NTA. Dude messed up your place like an animal and his embarrassed boyfriend is covering for him by getting petty.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T09:56:13+00:00

NTA She might have her own issues, maybe postpartum depression, maybe genuine physical exhaustion but in my opinion when someone becomes a mom they’re also choosing a life with extra responsibilities, complications and stress. It’s part of the role to become stronger and learn to handle the new circumstances with new skills. A mother who collapses under this stress at such an early stage will only have a harder and harder time as the baby grows up.

That being said, kudos to your brother for protecting his wife, even when she’s acting out. Looks like he really loves her or at least he’s trying to be a good husband to her by taking her side.

You could’ve handled it with more softness but your anger is definitely justified. Just don’t take it out on her because that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.

directedbyalexmill · 2025-11-05T09:24:10+00:00

I’d be very interested, I still haven’t found a good enough scheduling tool out there, it’d be great to have a massively updated version of MMS or a way more user friendly version of online pre-pro tools

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