There are a lot of career options in Cinema, from writing, directing, editing, production, design, voice-overs, acting, and many more.
The general impression that Cinema is hardly a career is dumb founded. This impression has had its toll on the education and training related to the film industry.
While the size of Indian Media and Entertainment Industry is 1.82 trillion, the number of trained professionals is dismally low. The sector that is divided across Film, Television, Events, Digital (including OTT), Gaming, Radio, Music, Animation and VFX and Digital Advertising offers enormous number of job opportunities today. These may sound like a number of categories but within each industry the number of job segments range from 6-100 and more.
Have you seen the ending credits of a film? There are almost 300-2000 names in the credits. These are the people who have worked on the film in various capacities.
You may ask why these industry sectors not have train professionals. The problem is the mindset. Cinema and these sectors are not even considered as career options at least till the under graduate level by most parents and academicians.
Hence, there is zero awareness about these. Don’t you agree that at the School level, you were a good actor, you wrote Dramas, excelled in painting, music or dance, sports. You wrote well, organized well, managed events and all these could have blossomed into lucrative career options had you been picked up at that age.
Imagine your passion would have become your profession. This could not happen because there was zero awareness. Imagine a school that prepared you for the job of an Accountant had developed your writing talent.
Today, as a Screen Writer you could have been charging anything between Rs.5 to 50 lakhs and more per Script.
If the same school had allowed your talent for photography to grow further, you could have been a Director of Photography today charging anything between Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 2,00,000/- per day and yet worked at your pace, your own time and free will.
The film industry alone pays even a Spot Boy anything between Rs. 500- 2,000 per day. Imagine, what could you have done, had you been exposed to careers in Cinema.
May be you missed the boat then but it’s never too late to begin. You can still make a beginning, no matter what you do right now, no matter your career is about to begin or even closed after a certain age.
The Media and Entertainment Industry has no retirement age. You can work as long as you want. You can work as much as you want. If you are good, sky is the limit. Why wait, start now, may be with baby steps but at least allow your talent a chance, a shot at stardom, your dreams.
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