Surprise your audience (and yourself)

Write about something or someone you are passionate about - your enthusiasm will hook your audience in.

For the film challenge, use the prop, the dialogue and the character with intention.

Write to your strengths - visuals, humour, dialogue etc.

Aim for a strong beginning and ending if you don't have much time. 

Learn Desktop Editing software

Hone your writing skills

Know your audience

Follow industry news and trends

Cultivate professionsal relationships

Get experience wherever you can. 

A quick, smart, inexpensive way of practicing your storyboarding skills is to do a music video.

The music provides the sound, so you don’t have to worry about that, and they usually don’t run for more than 3 minutes or so. 

Think of a few excellent, interesting visual sequences and find the appropriate song, or vice-versa.

Hone your skills by storyboarding a short story, a music video, or come up with an interesting sequence.  Try to find something that has not been done yet to avoid being influenced by it, or if it has been done, come at it from another direction/perspective, 

Any genre, it really doesn’t matter. Your job is to do something that is visually engaging, and above all interesting. 

Always ask yourself, “What if I tried it from this angle?”.

Look any and everywhere for a good visual narrative, especially sequential. That includes, television shows, tv commercials (Ridley Scott's early efforts are landmarks in storytelling),

Comic books, plays and even animation ( Darren Arnofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique are heavily influenced by anime director Satoshi Kon).

Watch films with good pacing. You will often find that it's not just the flashy, stylish directors who tell a story well. It’s all well and good to like Tarantino, both Spikes, Hitchcock, Lynch, etc., but good storytelling should be your first priority.

Look at the later Cohen Brothers films, Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer, etc.

Look at the great cinematographers like Roger Deakins, Geoffrey Unsworth, directors of photography of great noir films, etc. All of this will influence your choices.

While the talented director Sophia Coppola does not use storyboards, preferring to make her directorial decisions in the live space, she is a rarity.

You don’t have to produce great artwork to produce effective storyboards. Elaborate storyboards, often called ‘showboards’ tend to be more for the purpose of selling a product and impressing potential backers, and more recently for the ‘making of ‘ art books that often accompany big budget movies.  A great storyboard can even be produced from stick figures.

I wouldn’t advise it, though.

Try lots of things.

If you know you’re interested in working within the film industry, but you’re not sure where to start, try out lots of different things. There are many avenues you can work within the film industry, so it’s always a good idea to start with the basics - find things you enjoy doing and see which area fits you best. For example, if you like working with cameras, the camera department might be for you? Or if you like crafting stories, perhaps you might want to be a writer? I personally loved the creative side of film and tinkering with a story, but I also enjoyed being organised and pulling together a team of people to bring the story to life, so I found producing the best fit for me!

Make things!

It sounds simple, but just having a go and making a film is the best way to learn. Filmmaking is all about being practical, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and have a go at filming something. It could be a simple 30 second clip, or a full short film. The main thing is to not let the idea of it overwhelm you and just have a go at it. Don’t be embarrassed to put yourself out there.

Find people you like to work with.

Filmmaking is a very collaborative experience, and stems a lot from the connections you have with other people. Finding people you get on with, trust, and like to work with is a big part of the job. Filmmaking is rarely a solitary experience, so learning to work with other people and to trust them to bring the vision to life is integral. This could be as simple as bringing a group of friends together to shoot a film with you. 

Watch films

It sounds like an obvious one, but it’s one of the most important ones. Watching films and TV is a great way to discover what stories you enjoy, and in turn what stories you might like to tell. If you watch them more critically, it also helps you understand how a film is structured, the narrative devices used, and how to pace a film to make it engaging.

Try to find your style/voice.

Having a style or voice within the film industry can often be a hard one to pin down, but you want to choose projects/stories that you really resonate with and feel personal to you. For example if you find most of the films you love are horror films, maybe you want to have a go at writing a horror film? You don’t need to pin it down right away, but it’s good to try and lean towards things you actually enjoy and care about.  

Remember for a traditional story a Beginning, Middle & End. The beginning would normally intro your main character(s) & their aims, the middle would be their journey, adventure or mission and the end would be about their conclusions and what they and we (the viewers) have learned.

Don't cut directly on someone blinking! Although I have seen other respected filmmakers doing this it is usually jarring & awkward!

A blink usually means a person has understood or heard something, so therefore it is often a good time to cut a second AFTER a blink.

The rule of 3 - useable for many scenarios one example of which is when setting up a location in a scene. If you choose 3 shots of things in the location it will usually set the scene better than one or two.

If you can 'fade' your audio between clips (even just one frame) you will find the sound feels a lot smoother.