Shownotes
James Britt, founder and owner of Britt Films, a freelance cinematography and filmmaking business, identifies himself as a cinematographer. More than just capturing a video, he tries to add an element of cinematic technique and look to it, and he tries to give everything he does an artistic appeal. James has a great deal of passion for teaching anything that he learns, and he loves to share whatever he feels is good information. The advice he gives any budding videographer as to using this skill set to gain money is you absolutely can. You just have to really work at it. You have to market yourself, brand yourself, put your name out there, be producing good work consistently, and let people know that this is something that you do.
James Britt, Owner Of Britt Films, A Freelance Cinematography And Filmmaking Business (Creating Videos With Cinematic Technique And Look)
We have James Britt, the owner at Britt Films. Incredibly fortunate he took time out of his day to come see us. James, welcome to the podcast.
It’s great to be here.
James, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.
I’m the founder and owner of Britt Films, a freelance cinematography and filmmaking business. Primarily I shoot digital videos for hire, all kinds of things. Anything ranging from businesses who need a commercial, a web ad and ad campaign, organizations who need promotional videos, interviews, personal services like wedding videography. I shoot music videos for bands, all kinds of things. Specifically, I identify as a cinematographer, which a lot of people don’t know what that is, but I’m sure if they’ve heard of videographer and usually when you think of videographer, it’s someone that’s capturing the video.
A cinematographer would differ in that I’m more than capturing the video. They are trying to add an element of cinematic techniques, cinematic look to it. The angles and the shots will be a little bit prettier to put it more simply. In everything that I do, I try to give it an artistic appeal. More than you capture whatever we needed recorded, it looks great. It looks good. Actually, I try to make everything look more like a movie as the way that I put it. I would say that I’m doing these services for anybody who needs video. I can’t think of anyone or any type of organization that I wouldn’t be able to benefit if they had a video need.
Backing up a little bit and thinking about as you grew up, were you always drawn to cinematography?
I’m reminded in film school how many times the professor would ask something to the class about, “This is the first day of the semester. Tell me about yourself.” How many people would say, “I knew when I was four years old that I wanted to be a film maker. My dad got me this Super Eight camera, this old Polaroid photography camera.” I wish I could say that. I didn’t. I want to be a rock star or a psychologist or an English teacher, hairstylist for a little bit, I was all over the board. My mom did have a video camera and I’d love to say the moment I picked it up, I knew, but I picked it up and I thought it was fun and then I got bored of it.
It was something that I happen to keep getting drawn towards. Eventually, the way that I decided I wanted to go into it was I was a volunteer in my spare time. I was volunteering at a local church where I lived. I knew how to play guitar and I was helping the high school age group by playing guitar and helping with the band. Every time we’d get a new teenager who had to play an instrument, they needed to learn how to do the songs that we did, and I got tired of teaching the exact same songs over and over again. I figured, “I should record this.” YouTube was out. It was getting popularity and I figured it’s free, I could put something on there.
I found a point and shoot camera that had video function, I tried to use it. I made a simple little video that ended up getting thousands of views. I meant for it to just be for I’d direct a kid to it, but at the time, everything was public on YouTube and so it got some views. I got to thinking, “Maybe I should do some more, dress this up.” As I did that, I found I really like making the image look good, and from there it progressed. Getting more equipment and getting better software, learning what I can until now, it’s my greatest passion.
Where did you take and get your formal training?
I went to Full Sail University out of Winter Park, Florida, just out of Orlando.
Cinematography And Filmmaking: You have to market yourself, brand yourself, put your name out there, be producing good work consistently.
For the folks that may not be familiar, it’s well known as enough?
It’s very well known in media-based industries. A lot of the students that come out of there or the grads come out of there go into the film industry or they go into music production, live and recording production. A lot of game designers, graphic artists, all kinds of media. In fact, so many people that graduate from Full Sail are in all sorts of industries if you call them. Instead of waiting music or hold music while you’re waiting for someone to pick up, it’s prattling off about, “This Full Sail grad just won a Grammy for working on Pharrell Williams’ latest album,” or, “This Full Sail grad just worked on Transformer Five.” It was because of the success stories like that, that I knew that that was where I had to go to get my training.
As the owner of Britt Films there, for the folks that are out there going like, “I have this affinity for videography or cinematography.” What you guys can’t see you on the podcast is we’re surrounded by his equipment and I obviously have a shiny nose. I didn’t get my makeup squared away. Like you said, cinematography is supposed to make us look prettier. He has his work cut out for me. What advice might you offer to that budding videographer that’s thinking about going down the road that you might have gone and how you thought about marketing your business?
Actually, I have a great deal of passion for teaching anything that I’ve learned. Even though I’m young, relatively inexperienced compared to Hollywood gurus and other people who probably have 10 million reasons for why anything I say is inferior to whatever they could say, but when I learn something that I feel is good information, I love to share it. As a result, I’ve had several people online, like on Facebook, through my website, and various places on social media reach out to me and say, “I saw your stuff. I was curious if you’d tell me what camera you’re using.” As soon as I respond to them with more than just listing off model number and they realize I’ll give them some answers, I regularly have people messaging me, “I just shot this video. Can you watch it and tell me what you think? Can you give me some tips?”
I would say that some of the questions that I’m asked the most from other cinematographers or filmmakers who are just getting started, who for them, they are really just in the concept phase of getting this path underway.“How easy is it?” The answer is it’s not very. It’s very, very difficult actually in a number of aspects. It’s difficult from the perspective of it’s going to cost you a lot out of pocket. Unless you happen to have some financial backer who’s supporting your dream, prepare to max out some credit cards or to pull some extra shifts if you can or some odd jobs, but whatever you can to get that equipment.
From the perspective of using this skill set to gain money, you absolutely can, but you really have to work at it. You have to market yourself, brand yourself, put your name out there, be producing good work consistently, and letting people know that that is something that you do, because so many people from some school, friends of mine even, since graduation they still have done nothing with their education, nothing with their degree. The camera that they use all throughout film school is sitting in a closet collecting dust because they can’t find a way to actually put this knowledge into application in any way that pays the bills, so you do have to look for it. A lot of times you have to make those opportunities for yourself. Show people why it’s useful. Show people, “This is what you’re missing out on. I offer it, you can have this, let’s work together.”
I like to give newer cinematographers advice. I would say prepare for a long haul. It’s not going to be easy. You better like it, you better do it even when you don’t like it, like with editing a very long video that takes weeks more than you expected, or when you foolishly take on your first wedding video and they say, “All I have is $100, will that work?” You’re thinking “$100?Wow, that’s great. I haven’t made any money doing this. That sounds like a deal.” Then it’s a month later and you’re realizing “What did I sign up for? There’s so much to go through.” You don’t learn a lot of it until you actually do it. There’s a lot that I could say that you’re just going to have to experience it before you understand it.
For that budding businessperson/videographer/cinematographer, what would be the target market that maybe it’d be the top two or three markets that you would pursue to try to take and start creating cash flow first?
As entry level markets, I have found churches are actually an excellent market for newer cinematographers because of the rise of social media. Things like YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, places where you can’t scroll through without seeing dozens of videos, whether they’re short little, six or seven-second videos that make you laugh or full-on feature films or documentaries that are right there that you click on. People come to expect that any reputable organization, person, or brand have videos represent themselves.
Churches in particular, they’ve noticed that. Not all churches have the financial ability to hire someone who could make professional videos. A lot of times, smaller churches or even medium-sized churches, they’ll ask people in the group, “Does anyone have a camera that know how to shoot it? The pastor would like to make a fun video to play at the start of the service for Christmas or something for new people to watch.” Usually there’s someone with a camera who’s willing to fumble through that.
Everybody’s got a video nowadays with the cell phone.
It’s hard to do that and post a video and then you see another church that it’s like a professional video that compels you to want to be a part of their community and it’s so well done and polished where you’re wondering, “How do they do that?” For the cinematographer that is looking for where he can gain practice on the job for clients that typically their standards are usually relatively low, because like I said, the alternative is Joe Schmo in the congregation with an old camcorder that knows how to stick on a tripod.
If a cinematographer can come in with even a simple $400 or $500 DSLR camera with an interchangeable lens that has some fancy depth of field or they at least know, “I don’t have any lighting equipment, but I know how to position you in front of a window during the right time of day to where I don’t need it,” all it takes is one video like that to show them your value. Even though they might not be able to hire you as a full-time person, this could turn into a regular thing and now all of a sudden you have an ongoing client.
Let’s shift gears a little bit. You’ve worked with other business owners, and for a lot of the business owners they don’t understand necessarily the benefit or the magnitude or gravity of a well-done video. Walk us through basically an approach with the business were, “Before they were doing this and after we did this, this is the result of me being able to bring my cinematography effort for their benefit.”
Video is an excellent medium for advertisement.
The funny thing is though we’re talking about businesses, the first thing that come to mind is actually a band. This would actually be one of the other markets I’d say that works for up and coming newer cinematographers. Bands, much like any other organization or group, are all about advertisement. They need their sound heard. They need people to buy their demos and their tee-shirts and bumper stickers, but only if people know them are coming to their shows, and so they need advertisement. Video is an excellent medium for advertisement. There was one band when I was first getting started before I even made a penny off of the skills.
I was still trying to decide, “Is this something I like? Is this something I want to pursue?” I happened to be a friend with the singer of the band. They were trying to get themselves known and so they started a YouTube channel and they had a creative Facebook page, places for people to go, just what everybody does. The thing was people weren’t going. You still need people to know you to get there. The videos that they were doing were typically record out on their cell phones or borrowed cameras and camcorders where a review said, “This is the best budget camera for under $150.” I came in and I told them, “I’m still trying to figure this out, but if you guys are willing to let me try out some things with you, I’d be happy to give you what I make free of cost.”
We did that for a while actually. We did some live performances. We did some humorous videos. They wanted to take the comedy route. They realize the comedy attracts people to the charisma of the band or just wanting to see what comes next. There’s something about funny videos that gets people to watch them and share them, so we did a few of those. Then I decided I wanted to try make my first music video. Like, “Let’s make something that looks good.” We referenced a lot of music videos to see what did we like versus what could I do, given that I was the one person and my equipment at the time was very minimal, very basic.
Just one camera, a couple of lenses that were considered on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to professional lenses. I came up with what I believed I could do, added a little bit of ambition to it for what might push it further than what I’ve done before, and we found a space where we could shoot the video. We dress it up with just a bunch of black cloth. We got tried to guerrilla-make this video. We got some construction lamps that were very cheap compared to professional constant lighting equipment for photographers. These construction lamps were like $20 for 500 watts of light, which just got a bunch of them and decided, “No, we’re not going to use this to light the scene. Instead, we’re going to use it as a light source flashing into the lens so it flares everywhere. Let’s get a fog machine and just make this look epic.” I’m one guy so I can’t do multiple camera angles at once, but we can do a lot of takes and I can cut it to make it look like I was everywhere at once.
It was free for them so no objections and we did it. I was so eager to get this finished product to them, I just have to work on it, to edit it, and it worked exactly as I thought. By the time it was done, I had people asking me, “How many cameras did you use?”“It was just me, one camera, so many takes. Into three in the morning we were shooting.” I had that video done in 48 hours. I was shocked, but they posted that video and not only did it get tons of views, but they were able to share that video as their first professional anything that was not music-related. Anytime they were interviewed for an article on an online magazine or anything like that, they could share this like, “This is an example of our band.”
They were able to put it on their website. I was complimented when a heckler on YouTube, I read the comment that they put on their YouTube video that they said that they were led to this band because they were recommended by some indie music promoter, some independent bands. He goes, “How is this indie? This looks so professional.” I don’t think he meant it as a compliment. I think he meant it as, “I want to see the folk bands, like not these pro bands.” The best compliment I can ever get is, “This looks so professional, this looks like a movie.” They were very pleased and I was happy to continue working with them for a while. That experience helped me to eventually start working with other bands, other clients, started making money, stopped doing the free work, but that was all necessary to get to that step.
I think about the leg work that you hear all the time, and what you’re sharing is overnight success and maybe not. It’s an accumulation of steps.Shifting gears, we’re going to go through a series of questions that we always try to take and cover so everybody understands you better. For you, what is the most recent book or most influential book that has altered your perception on being a business owner or how you run your business, and why?
Shooting in Sh*tty Light: The Top Ten Worst Photography Lighting Situations and How to Conquer Them
As far as books, most of the books that I’ve read that apply to what I do are less toward the business side and more toward the application of cinematography. I could list several books that have helped me out with learning, trying to think of the title one, there was a photography book that I got. They should have marketed it toward photographers and videographers because it was so interchangeable, but it was marketed for photographers. It’s How to Shoot in Shitty Lighting. It specifically talks about how to capture amazing looking images when you have little to no control over the lighting environment, whether it’s inside of an office or it’s outside and the sun is bearing down on you or there’s no sun at all and it is low light or overcast or mixed lighting. All these types of conditions when you can’t get in your professional lighting. That was very important for me mostly because it helped me to understand that it was less about the gear that I have, even though I’m very appreciative of the gear they have, and more about how I work with what I have.
I think that applies to a whole lot more than lighting for sure. Looking over your business, what failure or at the time apparent failure, has served you or your company best to set you up for the future achievement that you’ve got and why?
I would say maybe not the number one failure, but the one that comes to mind at the moment is I’m very much a perfectionist. It is very hard for me not to try to exceed and excel at anything that I do or if I say I’m going to do something to not do everything humanly possible to see it...
