My Experience — Young filmmaker on the industry
In our new feature, TA: My Experience, we try to connect you with young or experienced artistes to try to give you insight into the art industry, their experiences, as well as challenges and tips. In teenAGE‘s first issue of My Experience, we spoke to Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts graduate, and photographer, stylist, motionographer and filmmaker Marz Jackson.EquipmentOpportunitiesSkillset@marz_jackson
Here is Marz’s experience in the Jamaican film industry:
“As a young up coming filmmaker it has been a adventure thus far, like every other job being a filmmaker has its challenges but it can be very rewarding as well. My filmmaking is really low budget, my crew usually includes myself as both director of photography and director, a stylist/makeup artist and a assistant who usually acts as my second eye slash grip.”
As it relates to equipment, I use a Canon 7D, with a Canon T2i as my back up, a tripod, reflector/diffuser, and mic. So as you can see my filmmaking right now is basically a skeleton crew and very little equipment. When it comes to film, however, the audience doesn’t care about what you used, but the final result.”
“It is difficult getting jobs in Jamaica as filmmakers because most people hire who they know, and most clients will more than likely go for the more established filmmakers. That isn’t such a bad thing when you look at it because they have proven themselves time and time, so it’s up to us now to prove why our team is the team for the Job. But besides that we also have to sometimes work for less than bigger crews and sometimes we don’t even get paid at all but this is what most of us have to do to build that awesome showreel at the end of the year hoping that next year that reel will help us to get better jobs.”
“I have also equipped myself with the knowledge of motion graphics and visual effects to help better my work because in this industry having a lot knowledge about various techniques among other things is a major selling point. I often have to meet tight deadlines sometimes, work long hours getting little to no sleep at all just to make sure that the work is right because when you’re a filmmaker the work doesn’t end. When you wrap on set, that’s when a large portion of it begins.”
Follow him on social media!
Instagram:
