Finding Freelance Work In The Video Production Industry

As a production freelancer, I’ve found work through a lot of different sources. Or more accurately, work has found me.

People want to know, like, and trust the people they hire. Being good at what you do is just the baseline. Beyond that, you need to show up at the right time, in the right place, in front of the right person, and present yourself in a way that makes you the obvious choice.

Here’s nearly every place I’ve gotten work as a freelancer.

Referrals

In film, TV, and commercial production, referrals are a major part of how crew get hired. Few things transfer trust as effectively as someone vouching for you and your work. Some people build entire careers on referrals and repeat business.

Referrals From Past Clients

Past clients who had a good experience working with you will often refer you to their colleagues. Referrals from previous clients are some of the strongest, since they come from firsthand experience of what it’s like to work with you.

Referrals From Colleagues

When producers are hiring a crew in a city where they don’t have existing contacts, it’s common for them to hire one key crew member first and then ask for referrals to fill out the rest of the team. I’ve received referrals from local production managers, directors of photography, gaffers, ACs, and more. In some cases, I was the first hire due to my search visibility and ended up referring most of the crew to out of town producers.

Referrals From Competitors

Because production work is date-specific, it’s common to refer clients to competitors when you’re already booked. Competing for the same jobs doesn’t prevent you from having good relationships with others in the same role. Building those relationships allows you to refer work back and forth and occasionally subrent equipment when needed.

Referrals From Facebook Groups

As the media production industry has become more decentralized, niche Facebook groups have become a common place to crowdsource referrals. Some are dedicated to finding freelancers nationwide, while others are more general or location-specific and used to find local crew. These tend to produce lower-quality referrals, since they can turn into popularity contests or quid pro quo rather than recommendations based purely on merit. That said, if you can stand out among the responses, they can still be a viable source of work.

Social Networking

Social media has become a useful place to meet, network, and stay top of mind with others in the production industry across the country and beyond. Once you’ve connected, it’s an effective way to build trust and stay visible until a relevant opportunity arises. It’s worth making an effort to connect with people in your role, adjacent crew, and both potential and past clients. You don’t need a large audience, you need the right audience.

Search Engine Results

For department head roles and vendors such as rental houses, directors of photography, sound mixers, HMU, and others, it’s not uncommon for producers to run a quick Google search to find crew. If you consistently rank for terms someone would search when actively hiring, you have a strong chance of booking that job.

This requires a website with enough authority to outrank competitors. SEO is a long-term play that continues working over time, but it requires upfront effort. That includes creating content that establishes trust and expertise, as well as building links from relevant, niche websites.

Competition varies by market and search term. In general, the production industry is not highly competitive in search relative to other industries. It’s significantly easier to rank for something like “Cleveland Sound Recordist” than “Los Angeles Sound Recordist” or broader terms like “Sound Recordist.” or “video production company”

Met In Person

Meeting people in person, whether as colleagues on set, at places like rental houses, or at in-person industry networking events, if you make a good impression, you never know who will reach out for a job or refer you to someone else.

Half of the battle in getting work is people knowing who you are and what you do, so it’s worth showing up to events and places where people in your industry are hanging out.

Email Newsletter

While I have definitely gotten work through my email newsletter, it has one of the lowest direct conversion rates compared to other sources mentioned here (at least for production freelancers). That said, it’s still a useful way to update past and prospective clients and colleagues on what you’ve been working on and to stay top of mind until a relevant opportunity arises…similar to social media. With email, there is a risk of annoying people, so I intentionally send marketing emails very infrequently, respect unsubscribes, and even remove people from my list if they haven’t opened past emails.

Job Board Sites

There are niche specific job board sites for production freelancers (like Staff Me Up, Production Hub, or Nova) that charge you a subscription for the privilege to apply to jobs listed on their platform. These sites tend to skew heavily towards low quality jobs that are predominately shopping around on price. These platforms are also extremely competitive with people willing to work for less then established professionals usually are. As a result, I personally do not think it’s worth paying for these type of websites, however if they have a free tier to have a profile, it never hurts to own another space online. I’ve defiantly gotten a few gigs over the years that found me through platforms like that, but its such a low amount that I wouldn’t consider paying for these kinds of platforms.

Additionally there are often crew directories that you can be listed in for free from your local film commission’s directory or other sites. While this won’t be a large source of work, it is quite possible when crewing up people will look there. Here is my directory of Cleveland Production Freelancers!

Cold Outreach

Cold outreach has some of the lowest success rates of any method for getting work, and even if done well, it can easily be ignored or annoy people. No one wants to receive a generic, copy andf pasted mass email that you sent to hundreds of others.

If you do cold outreach, lead with value (like free advice) and don’t ask them to hire you outright. That’s not to say you shouldn’t make your offering known, but it shouldn’t be your a hard sell. Just reach out, introduce yourself, offer to grab a coffee, and see if there’s any way you can help them without asking for anything in return.

If your goal is genuinely to connect with people who share commonalities, rather than to sell yourself, cold outreach can work as networking provided it’s genuine and truly personalized.