Of all the great mysteries to solve, it often seems like getting started in the video business is one of the hardest. For whatever reason, there seems to be a distinct lack of agreed-upon advice on how to do it. However, as a videographer who has put a significant amount of years in trying to find the right place to put my foot in the door, I felt it was time to share my findings with the world. Granted, I have yet to make it really big  in any area of video but I have been privileged enough to direct live productions at concerts with 100,000 people in attendance, win national video contests (including a Telly award for Videomaker’s Wedding Videography DVD), make regional commercials, travel to places as far as Africa, and of course, shoot and edit video for companies like Videomaker. Nonetheless, there are people in more influential positions than myself so I can’t really say I know all there is when it comes to getting started in the video business.

With all that being said, I think it would be best to break the advice I have to give into two parts: fine-tuning your video skills and finding jobs in the industry. These are the two most crucial parts to getting started in any video business.

The first thing you’ll have to tackle is learning how to shoot, write, and/or edit. This is the hardest part for almost any aspiring videographer and is inevitably where most people fail. It takes a lot of drive to see this part of the process through and without it, there is little chance of success. Basically, if you want to learn how to shoot, write, or edit, you’ll have to initially find training material either online, on a DVD, or in a book. This is where websites like Videomaker (in which I may have just a bit of a bias) have you covered. They have training from how to come up with story ideas all the way to keyframing advanced titles in After Effects, so a site like ours is a great place to start. In addition, you can also find someone who is already making video professionally and offer your help on any video projects that they’ll be shooting or editing. This way, you can eventually learn how to shoot and edit from someone who is currently in the industry. This is a great place to start for those looking to get into the film industry. Many aspiring filmmakers have started as production assistants for small budget film sets in Hollywood and once they’ve proven their worth, have made their way up to an assistant director or director of photography after a number of years.

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If you could capture a single day of your life, would you? If you could capture a single day in the lives of people all around the world, could you? Producer Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien) and Director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void) will soon find out. Their newest project, Life In A Day, attempts to capture a single day on earth. What makes this project unique is they want you to shoot it.

The goal of the project is to get people to submit raw footage of the things that make up their day. From the average ho-hum events to the wild and unusual; they want it all. The catch? Whatever you decide to shoot, it has to be shot on one day, specifically July 24 (between 12:01AM and 11:59PM in your local time zone), then uploaded to the Life In A Day channel on YouTube for it to be considered for the documentary. The “most compelling and distinctive footage” will be used in the final documentary, and the producer of the submitted footage will receive a co-director credit.

“It is gonna be something unusual and it is gonna be something which has, I think, a kind of social value to it. It’s a unique kind of documentary,” says Macdonald. “It’ll be kind of like a time capsule, which people in the future, maybe in twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred years could look at that and say, ‘oh my God, that’s what it was like.’ A portrait of the world in a day.”

If you’re thinking about submitting a video, it is stressed that you capture quality audio and follow the YouTube community guidelines. Not to mention, there are a couple of questions they’d like you to answer in your video. Be sure to check out the Life In A Day channel on YouTube for details. As for content, Ridley Scott suggests “It should be personal. It must be personal. That’s what we’re looking for. The key of course is what appeals to you, as the author.”

The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011.

The recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, TX saw quite the gathering of filmmakers discuss the contentious issue of making money by way of digital distribution. Although the common belief is that DVDs will be obsolete sooner rather than later and that online video sharing sites are the future the truth is that the Digital Distribution doesnt provide the same reliable numbers as film and television does.

According to panelist Morgan Spurlock ( “Super Size Me” and “Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?,”) “The reason numbers aren’t released (for digital distribution revenues) is because the numbers are pathetic,” he said. “The numbers are sadly low in comparison to what we expect from film and television. If you’re looking to pay your rent, not so much, if you’re looking to pay your phone bill, you have a great chance. It’s getting to a point where it’s down the road from being profitable, but we’re just not at that point yet.”

The panelists had many different ideas concerning what the best method to digital distribution is. Whether or not filmmakers should try to get the content out everywhere, or be much more selective was the main question that the panel couldn’t come to terms on. According to president of distributor New Video, Steve Savage, “It’s good to be agnostic, and I think it’s a good way to put everything out there and see what sticks but there’s also other ways to do it,” he asserted, “to be really strategic, to find where the money is.”

Discovering where that money lies may be the biggest challenge, what do you guys think? Let us know.