So cinema has long been an obsession of mine, always dreaming of one day working in the industry. Though being a realist, I've since chosen a more 'realistic' career path by becoming an engineer. But having worked for a mining company for a few years now, my dreams of being a film maker keep coming back to me.

Unfortunately I'm also at a point where I wouldn't know where to begin. I'm good at the engineering work, particularly working in teams to tackle larger projects, as well as the leadership roles I've been placed in. But pretty much everyone I know is an engineer, with little to no interest in cinema. I don't really know anything from a technical perspective on how to make films, but I'm willing to learn.

So I was wondering if anyone here would have any advice to someone hoping to become a filmmaker. What would be the best course of action? Film school? Shorts film?

Luckily without having the worry of being a struggling artist, I'm pretty well off when it comes to money, so I have the ability to self finance any small independent projects I choose to embark upon. I've never been much of a writer, but lately I've been spending more time attempting to write scripts for short films, and I've had some quite positive feedback from friends and family (though I assume they wouldn't want to hurt my feelings).

But if anyone has had experience working in the film industry, I would greatly appreciate any advice on where to start

I have literally no expertise in this field but I have thought about it myself and would suggest filming your own short. Or failing that there is some good and user-friendly animation software out there now. Perhaps that is an avenue that could be explored.

I can't call myself an expert by any means. I'm basically a filmmaker who has yet to make a feature film.

The best advice I can give is the advice I read in an interview with Steven Spielberg when he was asked what would he tell aspiring filmmakers: Make afilm. These days it's easy to buy or rent a decent digital video camera at a reasonable price. So I echo Spielberg's advice: come up with an idea and make a film. It can be a short or a feature. Shoot something and put you're name on it. You're a filmmaker.

A few other suggestions:

1: Buy or borrow copies of the books Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez and Making Movies by Sidney Lumet. The Rodriguez book shows how to make a film cheaply and efficiently, the Lumet one is full of advice from a cinematic pro who's been around the block his share of times.

2: Watch movies critically. Take em apart, figure out what works and what doesn't, what you like and what you don't like.

When it comes to screenwriting and script development I can't really recommend any books in that regard. I never read any of the Syd Field ones. I tried reading one of them. But found it to be too rigid. I learned to format a screenplay by looking at ones for films I like.

When it comes ot writing characters I tend to model them off of people I know or know of. To me that's the best way to make them three-dimensional or as close to it as possible.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Field's theory of screenwriting is interesting, but it's ultimately inflexible.

My suggestion for any kind of storytelling is to listen to good storytellers talk about what they do. Listen to director commentaries. Read "behind the scenes" books. While not about movies, Alan Moore wrote a very good pamphlet called Writing For Comics--mainly about storytelling in general--which I've found myself returning to again and again.

Remember that images mean something, that how they're composed has an enormous effect on the person looking at them, and that their greater significance often has little to do with moving the plot.

Question: is it your aspiration to make movies, or specifically to work in the film industry?

My aspiration is more to make movies. Ever since I was I child, I always loved to build things. I always loved Lego, building elaborate constructions for the toys to play out their adventures. I spent a lot of my early teenage years learning how to make amateur video games, since I could make them by myself with basically no resources. None of them were particularly good, but I learn a lot about programming, which lead me to become a software engineer. And even in my engineering work, I love the concept of being able to build something from nothing. The only problem is that the software I'm required to build isn't something I'm particularly interested in, and thus I don't find it all that rewarding. Ultimately, film has been my main interest ever since I was about 13, and I've always dreamed of being able to make them.

I've looked into making video games as potential career, either professionally or in the amateur market. But the work is extremely difficult and time-consuming, even to make an independent title. I'm not much of a visual artist, so I'd need to find an artist. Stable physics simulation is very difficult to program, and third-party simulators require a lot of work both learning the API and integrating into the rest of the application. And anything in a 3D world-space requires a lot of knowledge about vector spaces, rigid body transformations, lighting equations, etc, so it's not the kind of thing you can just dive into. I lead a team back in college in a computer graphics course to develop a rather simple 3d Tank game in OpenGL, and I would have spent over a month working 10-12 hours a days. Needless to say, making video games required a LOT of investment of time and effort before any of the rewards come into focus. For the most part it just feels like you're fighting against the technology you're using to create your vision, and all my experiences just felt very messy.

With film, I feel that there's a much closer relationship between the vision you have, and how you create it. First you write a script, work out how the script will be filmed, create the sets, train the actors for the parts, work out how to achieve any special effects, light the scene, and then film it. Then in post-production comes the editing, sound-mixing, scoring, etc. Of course that's over simplifying it, but to me there's a logical flow of events, where everything has a 1-1 relationship with the action performed and its intended effect. I like that, the kind of elegance behind it.

I'll definitely try and track down those two books that have been recommended. And I've already done some reading into screen-writing, and have already found it very useful. My biggest problem with any screenwriting advice is how to apply it to short films. I've found it difficult to add much dimension to characters when you only have 10-15 minutes to tell a story. And having watched a number of short films that have won prizes, most of them tend to be centered on a clever twist, joke or gimmick, with not a whole lot in the way of characterization.

But I've completed two short film drafts so far. I've tried to limit the scope to single sets with a small cast of characters. They tend to focus on a simple scenario that's easy to relate to (e.g. working a dull job in a supermarket, or a teenager not allowed to use the car until he cleans his room), and then have the situations get progressively more surreal and strange. I'm planning on getting a camera, tripod and some lights in the next few weeks so I can practice filming and prototype some of the special effects and editing ideas I've had. I've also been watching a lot of youtube videos that demonstrate how achieve professional looking shots with a limited budget.
I think Paul Thomas Anderson said on his commentary for Boogie Nights that the best way to make movies is to steal from other film makers, and make those ideas your own. I’ve spent a lot of time observing how scenes are put together, taking note of any clever techniques that are used that I might be able to apply to my own ideas.