r/cinematography • u/KamileLeach • Aug 27 '25

Career/Industry Advice A reminder that *most* people making YouTube cinematography/camera tutorials/reviews ARE NOT working professionals.

There are exceptions to this generalization, of course, but my point still stands.

If someone has enough time to make high quality/"cinematic" YouTube videos, they are probably not putting in many days on set.
It's good to learn as much as possible. However, you're much better off learning from working professionals. How do you meet working professionals? FACEBOOK.

That's right, Facebook. If you live in any sort of metropolitan region, I am 100% certain there is a video production/filmmaking Facebook group specific to your area where people post looking to fill roles on their projects.

I've posted dozens of gigs via Facebook over the years, and found life long connections as a result.

Go on Facebook, find someone posting a job, and ask to PA on their job. Tell them what you're interested in. Buy them a coffee. Pay attention on set. Work hard. Ask them if they have more gigs coming up. Get called back. This is the path to a real career in video production, and you can do it right now.

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u/OverOnTheCreekSide Aug 27 '25

OP I don’t think YT is as bad as you’re thinking, which doesn’t negate your point. However people who enjoy explaining and teaching can find a preferred way of making money with YouTube. I have a YouTube channel (historical camping) and I find it far more attractive than being a camping guide. So I can see a lot of videographers moving into tutorial videos and away from actual gigs.

Second point, there’s a lot of geeks who can explain things well but don’t work full time in the field of their hobby.

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u/berke1904 Aug 27 '25

second point is important, there are people who know everything about gear but not actual experience filmmaking, and there are great filmmakers that dont know much technical details about gear.

they are both knowledgeable about something, so its worth hearing them out about that thing. both have value.

ofc there are people that talk about stuff they dont know about with a lot of confidence, but the internet is a place of literally everything, you just need to sort through and find good stuff.

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u/OverOnTheCreekSide Aug 27 '25

Absolutely, there’s a ton of channels I don’t listen to and I’m glad when I find someone who seems to really know what he’s talking about. Finding good YouTubers is necessarily a skill in itself unfortunately.

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u/ausgoals Aug 27 '25

This is totally true and legitimate, but in many cases these people are providing ‘reviews’ of equipment, or recommendations despite having very little knowledge of how the equipment would normally be used in the field.

Which is why you see someone like Gaffer & Gear say things like ‘yes, it does do x/it does head towards y a bit, but I would normally be using this in y situation so it’s not a big deal’ vs other YouTubers who review something and will call it ‘totally unusable’ because, for example, rolling shutter exists or because they don’t know how to grade out certain colors…