full image - Repost: 36M in freelance management role in film & TV, feel my future slipping away. How can I switch industries with no clear successes, no technical skills, and a useless degree? (from Reddit.com, 36M in freelance management role in film & TV, feel my future slipping away. How can I switch industries with no clear successes, no technical skills, and a useless degree?)
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Hi guys, 36M in Canada here, sorry for the long post. I've had an unconventional career in an unconventional field. I've been a line producer/UPM in film and TV production for about 7 years, and loved it. For those unfamiliar, producers hire me as a freelancer and my job is to deliver a show on time and on budget: hiring crew, arranging locations and equipment, supervising the production, and keeping both the creative people and the money people happy. Like a project manager with hiring/firing power, a heavy crisis management emphasis, and 16-hour days, often for weeks on end. :) I'm still a journeyman and a striver paying his dues in the indie world and have yet to be associated with anyone well-known, so I cannot call myself successful. But now the entertainment industry is shrinking worldwide, work is scarce, the jobs that do exist pay much less than before, and I'm staring down the barrel of financial ruin. I'm wondering if I should jump too before I'm pushed. How do I navigate a successful career transition from a creative field to the corporate world, especially when it becomes obvious that I never really 'made it' in this career I sacrificed everything for? Has anyone been in a similar position?I was a late bloomer (mid 20s) with a pretty atypical career path, even for the standards of this crazy industry. The language of business in Montreal is French and I'm a native English speaker from another province, so I had to achieve fluency via side gigs in comms & marketing before I could even begin. Instead of climbing the ladder I was kinda parachuted into the role after a colleague burned out, and ended up rising to the occasion well enough to get more gigs. I'm known as a go-getter who runs a tight ship and keeps calm in the face of chaos. I was lucky to get to shoot all over the world, live and work abroad for a time, and become a sort of specialist in international films that shoot in multiple countries. I also worked on financing, development and story consulting to have something for the slow periods, aiming to be equally strong on creative, financial and technical, to anticipate the leaner future of the business. Put all my time and limited financial resources into this quest, chasing work across oceans, paying my own way to film festivals and markets to network, living out of a suitcase for years, neglecting relationships, etc. But over the last few years, my income has averaged about $37k CAD/$27k USD per year, and I can't even qualify to rent my own apartment. I've never had benefits, retirement, or any savings beyond an emergency fund and a small registered account which is now almost gone. I am also an independent contractor which means no access to unemployment and overheads that eat up ~10% of my net income every year.The traditional career progression for my role is to start small on domestic shows, then work your way up to American productions for substantially better pay and prestige on your CV/resumé. After years of grinding I finally got attached to this kind of film, only to have it fall through at the last second and take most of my projected income for the year with it. And now that the American industry is going through what appears to be a long term decline, there is less production than before, and the shows that exist would rather shoot elsewhere in Canada. So I feel like that path has been snatched away and no longer exists as a viable option.But I see that in just about every industry, successful people share one trait in common: a person or company whose name carries some weight was willing to take a chance on them early, when they were still young and fresh, and believe in their character and potential. I tried and tried, but these people would never give me the time of day, their circles stayed closed. I instead ended up working with the people who had no reputation to lose and precious little to offer in either pay or quality learning. Not all experience is created equal, and not all experience counts. Prestige is everything. I want to stay in film but I can't take another 7 years of poverty - I need to be prepared for the possibility that the best thing I can do to preserve my love of the art form is to cut my losses.I have a liberal arts BA from a second-tier local university, from which I graduated in 2017 with a 2.3 GPA (out of 4.3) because meds and therapy weren't enough to help me get my mental health and substance abuse problems under control in my 20s. I will regret those decisions for the rest of my life, but it's done. I have been told often I have a good technical mind, but I have no hard technical skills .If I could go back to 20-year-old me who moved here with nothing knowing no-one, I would have chosen an actual profession with a future, like law or engineering, but I can't lose any more earning years. The most obvious first jump is to transition into project management, preferably in a more stable and AI proof industry with something resembling job security. So: tech and IT, no; mining, healthcare & maybe telecom, yes. I have already started networking in secret. But cinema uses antiquated and bespoke methods - to producers, Agile and Lean may as well be words your personal trainer yells at you - and I feel like I need some sort of reputable credential to help close the skills gap. I fully expect my experience to be incomprehensible to anyone who sees my CV.I've been looking into a two year part time MBA at a top-5 university for around $10k CAD/$7k USD, and according to the admissions people I talked to, I could crush it on the standardized test, collect some ref letters, and mitigate the impact of my garbage GPA. I've already started studying for the test and know I could do well, but I wouldn't put my chances of being accepted above 25%, especially with no big names to be found among my references.Also, and I apologize for this part, I'm already very worried about optics. I just can't see how any company big enough to have an HR department would risk hiring a straight white male, especially one over 40, which I will be in a few years. It's been drilled into us that the future is female and the future is diverse, and why would anyone want someone who is a literal visual representation of the past we're trying to leave behind, but without the wisdom and experience to justify keeping them around? The truth is that this belief that I am too toxic for the corporate world is one of the things that has kept me going in freelance life this long. I can't carry this resentment in me anymore, and I sincerely hope to be proven wrong.I'm lucky to have a woman in my life who I love very much, and I can see a long future together for us and maybe even a family, so I want to do right by this vision and give it the best chance I can of coming true. I know that work opportunities come and go, but the people who we care about are irreplaceable.Has anyone been through a similar experience of career transition in mid to late 30s despite not shining so bright in your previous career, and how did it work out for you? Especially if you transitioned out of a creative industry into the corporate world?Would appreciate your thoughts.
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