Introducing myself: career transition to filmmaking

[AlexHuddleston]

Hi everyone, I'm going to write a little introductory post here as per Chris's automated recommendations. I am 36 years old and I've been a classical musician for basically my whole adult life. I completed a PhD in music composition right before COVID hit. I was always interested in the furthest edges of the musical avant guarde, so composing film scores were not super relevant to me, but I have scored 5 short films. I've always been a huge lover of cinema, but I never had any notion of being a filmmaker until 2022. At around that same time, my partner, an opera singer, started to produce small operas (meaning big operas by the likes of Puccini but produced on a super small scale). I figured what the hell and started to direct these shows and as time went on, to make things more relevant to my interests, I started to contrive ways to incorporate filmmaking into the actual performances themselves. This idea reached a high water level early 2024 with our production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, where I adapted a script from the original script of spoken scenes, which occur between the musical numbers, and then shot those scenes as short films interwoven into the body of the opera. This was a complete DIY operation - shot on a used Sony alpha 7III, using music mics to record audio, we didn't even own a C-Stand, and we were just pulling like hell to get this crazy thing past the finish line. I wrote the screenplay, I directed the actors (also in the stage production), did the cinematography, and I pulled a couple all-nighters doing all the editing...

The whole production is here, and while I know it's not super meaningful, we just recently passed 16 thousand views on YT.

I will say, I hope all who may be reading this can understand the enormity of the task and the sheer sweat-of-brow that went in to this, and can also therefore forgive some of the more problematic technical issues. Since then, I've been trying to basically make the things I do better, look more legit, and simply to do as much filmmaking as I possibly can. SO.... When I started on this specific journey, I was thinking there was no way I was going back to school - you will recall that I already have a PhD - but I'm now coming around to the idea. It might be that the scrappy DIY methods are just too limiting for what I'd really like to do. I think of myself as a filmmaker, meaning script writing, directing, and editing. If I had to choose one of those, absolutely it's directing.

I guess I'll include a couple questions here

- How do you feel about the 'scrappy DIY' vs filmschool routes?
- Anybody else trying to manage a career transition?
- Any projects where you love a lot about it but the technical limitations make you cringe?

Thanks guys!