Film Courage: When you first moved to Los Angeles, what was your strategy for finding work in the film industry?
Sophia Cacciola, Cinematographer, Actor, Musician, Director: The first job I found was on Facebook (I think Facebook). I don’t know if it’s getting less so but I think it’s great (the groups) for getting your foot in the door and responding. I was lucky. I had the right gear at the right moment and they needed somebody that day to show up for two weeks and took a leap of faith and went to this house. I was driving into a place I’ve never been. I’m going to stay in this cabin with these people and hopefully I don’t get murdered and luckily it all worked out. Once you meet a couple of people usually, if you do good work and you have a good ethic and you’re fun to be around and people can tolerate you for 16 hours a day, you’ll get hired again. But it’s a lot of personality. You can’t be too needy or demanding or annoying because you’re not going to get the work. Getting the first job out of the way and then responding. A lot of my work actually comes from film festivals. I bring my work to a film festival and then I meet other screenwriters and other directors and suddenly I’m on their mind to call because they’ve seen my work and they’ve met me, we’ve gotten to be friendly, we make friends on Facebook or social media and then they’re okay Maybe you can come shoot my movie when it’s time? A lot through general networking and luckily because I think it would have been much harder for me if I didn’t have any body of work when I first arrived in LA but because I had three features under my belt that I’d made on nothing in Boston with our friends, it showed that I had something to come with and be all right Look this is what I can do, hire me for whatever. I think that helped because had I tried to make those movies not knowing how LA works, I think it would have been a lot more difficult. I probably could now that I’ve met enough people and made enough connections and I kind of understand a little bit more how the industry works here. I’ve been able to make low budget movies here but I think diving in it would have been much harder not having that understanding. I guess it’s a lot of networking and talking to people and getting out there, responding to ads.
Film Courage: How does the industry work here versus let’s say Boston?
Sophia: Boston has the big movies that come from LA and shoot there and then people doing very DIY. There’s not a lot in the middle of…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Sophia Cacciola is a Los-Angeles-based producer, director, and cinematographer. With her production company Launch Over, she has made numerous sociopolitical genre feature films that have played at more than 75 film festivals and have been distributed worldwide. Sophia started out in music, most notably as the singer-songwriter-drummer in the no-wave punk band, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling.
CONNECT WITH SOPHIA CACCIOLA
Youtube.com/LaunchOverSophiaCacciolaMichaelJEpstein
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