If you want to be an actor, don’t just be an actor. Learn some other skills that shall make you employable on the set. This was the advice of some of the film professionals appearing at talks at the Gold Coast Film Festival last April.
A few made the point that having other skills increases your chances of being employed in film work, even if it wasn’t for an acting job. And it helped you learn about movie making and kept you in the loop about any acting jobs going. One actor had been trained in rigging, but this led to him gaining work in stunts and acting.
You could also bring technical knowledge to acting or directing if you were trained in other fields. For example an armourer or weapons expert would know how much particular guns kicked back, or didn’t kick back when he was an actor firing a gun. And if you went into directing, you would avoid misrepresenting how weapons worked.
And stunt work experience helped you when acting out fight scenes. Some actors didn’t have these skills, so this had to be hidden by camera angles and other actors in fight scenes.
And a few directors at the festival said that film makers liked to work with people they knew and trusted. So if they knew you from one aspect of film making, you might be able to transition to acting.
Another good tip was to do with scriptwriting. If you write a script, try to make it as inexpensive to produce as possible. Set it in one location was the advice of one director. Producers look more favourably on a good script that would be cheap to make. For example, the director of The Pretend One, Tony Prescott, said that he made his film on a friend’s cotton farm in western Queensland. They had only one campsite for the crew for the duration of the shoot. Every location they used was a short trip away from this one campsite. There might be one scene at a dam, another in a cotton field, but they’d always return to that one campsite. Having the one campsite cut costs, because they didn’t have to pack up everything and move to a new location several times. This also saved a lot of exhaustion for the crew. They also hired the hotel in a nearby town to supply the catering for the crew, which further cut costs.
There were many other tips from film professionals at the festival’s REELLIFE panels, including reading tips.

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