From Short Films to The Industry with Gabriel Miller

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This week I to chat with Gabriel Miller, a talented filmmaker and the brains behind The Industry newsletter.

Gabriel kicked off his journey as an editor, collaborating with big-name brands on nationwide campaigns. But he noticed something missing—a reliable source of news for folks in the film industry. So, he took matters into his own hands and birthed The Industry newsletter—a daily dose of what's hot and happening in the film biz, accessible to all.

During our chat, Gabriel opens up about his own journey breaking into the industry, talks about his work with those big brands, and shares some super helpful tips for anyone starting out in film. Plus, he'll convince you why subscribing to The Industry newsletter is an absolute must!

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We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.

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Transcript

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[Music] hi Jim here and you're listening to the honest filmmaker podcast career advice from people in the business this week I spoke to filmmaker and editor-in-chief of the industry newsletter Gabriel Miller gabes edited projects starring the likes of Beyonce Robert Downey Jr Kiana Reeves and Lady Gaga he's worked with GQ Vogue L'Oreal Showtime Spotify and many many more this is a good one if you want to be an editor uh Gabe talks about how he got into the industry what it's like working with big Brands and also some advice on his workflow and how he gets his projects done enjoy I'll start off as I start off with a lot of people and ask you uh did you go to UNI did you study but what what sort of training have you done yeah I ended up going to uh New York University that's what ended up bringing me to uh to New York where I currently live so yeah I did uh NYU undergrad film schore cool and how how much do you think that prepared you for the real world I thought it was a really interesting program actually what I loved about the first two years of the program which were my favorite was the first year and the thing is I came into NYU having done a bunch of short films stuff in high school but not really having any kind of proper education or training around film making and what NYU did that I loved was in the first semester they had a photography course but what that prepared you for was the basics of L ISO shutter speed frame rate all like aperture all those things that I didn't really know existed before then it just kind of dialed you into understanding how each of those choices affective like the creative decisions behind image making so you would pretty much do these like Photo products but then also like films that were just like in L jete es I guess where it's just like Photo films right where it's just of Still Still photos so that was fantastic and then the second semester they flipped it and it was just audio dramas and we learned about sound design and that I actually found much more influential in my own film making because I mean I think is hopefully most people realize that the sound design is almost more important than the visuals I mean people will sit through bad visuals but the second that the sound is often the slightest you know you have people walk out yeah I'm into that that is funny I did a lecture the other day about this and I always put the sound is so important and often when you're doing uh when you're studying or you're doing a student film it does get kind of it's the less glamorous isn't it of the getting the lenses out and the kit the sound sort of comes secondary and you're just missing a whole like half the film and half of the storytelling capabilities you're just ignoring them um so yeah can't stand by that enough that's a good uh good tip already there um so how did you go from leaving uni to now doing all uh brand stuff magazines fashion video all that kind of stuff what what what what got you into that yeah uh the commercial stuff that I've done it was through a series of uh negative experience experiences working with clients actually which actually started no yeah it started in college right because the thing is as someone coming to New York for the first time I didn't come to New York with any kind of Connections in the industry right so I was like let me just take on every project that I can get my hands on to and I think the first kind of big opportunity I got was actually freshman year um in college and I ended up getting to do this music video for this guy that wanted Grammy so I was like very excited about this but I think I sent this guy a contract and I think we were gonna try to do the music video for like three or$400 right something that was just like Pennies on the dollar for this guy and he came back saying like Gabe one like I'm not going to send you any money you're like an unproven you know filmmaker and I've wanted Grammy over here pretty much like kind of lording over you like and he said and how unprofessional you to send me a contract he's like I've been in the business 25 years like what have you done and it was this really crazy thing that just I was like I don't understand why this guy like is is doing this but it was because he was just trying to exploit me but I ended up I did this music video and it ended up going on The Huffington Post which at the time you know this is back in 2010 2011 was definitely like a cooler place to be on so that was really cool and when that got a little bit of press I ended up um doing a number of other things I mean the next thing I ended up doing was actually an internship at the Weinstein Company oh wow okay this2 yeah and for that I was getting paid a dollar an hour because that was like yeah yeah it was a$10 per day stien so and I would work 10 hours a day and that was um that was really nuts yeah I had a few bad experiences there I remember I got brought in first day on the internship I'm like really excited I'm like well what am I going to be doing and they said well Gabe you're going to be uh working for this woman Merill poster I'm like well who's Merill well it turns out Merl's produced Chicago shoko sler House Rules some like the OG like win scene mirror Max films uh and I said okay like what am I gonna be doing for Merill like well Gabe uh Merl's assistant is in the hospital actually I was like oh my God why they're like well because of a stress Rel adism like okay they're like well Gabe you are now her assistant so I became an executive assistant at weining company day one of my internship and they sat me down at Merill um at the phone and they said Gabe like answer for the answer the calls transfer the calls and the thing is like I think now I would have definitely kind of asked some questions around it okay how do I do that but at the time I was a little bit nervous to ask any questions and it also wasn't a very friendly environment so I just they just kind of set me off off I thought I was doing a good job I got called back in from lunch and Merl goes gave my office go okay all right so I come to Merl's office and she goes Gabe did like a Mr zkin give me a telephone call this afternoon I go you know Marl I'm pretty sure he did I pretty sure I took down a message and she goes no no look he did call and you didn't take down a message and you you need to answer my phone like a human being or you will not be answering it at all so that was like day one of the internship and that just kind of epitomized like the entire uh eight-month experience at that company and it pretty much taught me like one I don't want to be working at a like a Film Production I want to go off and make my own films but it was kind of like a series of these products where I just kept getting kind of like low balled and put in this position where I was doing a lot of work for free where I finally ended up taking like a uh a business course and doing some business training and just understanding like kind of like the tactics to negotiate just in a little bit stronger of a sense and it definitely allowed me to uh take on some higher level uh you know commercial projects both like as a editor director producer yeah that's crazy so you've had your own mini devil we PR style experience it was it was literally devil and the funny thing too is I've actually worked for Anna winter who is some stuff for vog actually so I've defin gotten that experience as well oh wow okay okay that's cool um so then that's a good point so you're saying the obviously the university stuff prepares you for the technical side but there is a bit missing which is that business Acumen kind of haggling all that kind of stuff um so so would you suggest people do a business course or do you think that's available online now or what do you think people should do yeah I mean I ended up I mean my it was funny my dad ended up referring me this book uh called you can't teach a kid to ride a bicycle at a seminar which is a ridiculous title but it just kind of like walks you through some like basic business negotiating principles and I think allows you I mean pretty much the Mind ship that I had I think that was the most significant that I could definitely share is that I stopped being a service provider okay like I have a 4k camera I have this lens I can do this thing it's like what do people actually want is they just want a business result so it's trying to like really dial down and understand like what is the problem you're having in your business I mean for a commercial like I mean it could be for anything but what is the problem you're having in your business and how can I solve that and give you the best result possible right so for the music video I shouldn't have been saying like well it's only $300 I said well if you guys want this music video to like be seen by this many people or if you want it to get some really good press like I can deliver that to you because then you're not talking about like the $300 you're talking about well let me get this result result for you and you're kind of reframing the conversation I think that's what a lot of people do incorrectly I think especially when they're starting yeah yeah yeah good tip and um looking at the stuff you've done so you've you've done all these like amazing projects that you've cut together for example we talked about editing for a minute um if you're doing a student film micro budget something like that your problem is usually that you're trying to fix problems fix issues but what happens when you get because I think I looked at one of your show reals or one of the you did for COD Nast I think it was and you're getting footage from presumably dops who are like at the top of their game beautiful footage tons of it what what do you do when it's all good stuff coming to you how do you make those decisions to to make something like that a Sizzle reel based on all that stuff when it's all awesome yeah and it's interesting because I've done like dozens of Sizzle reels but the K Nas one is really interesting because I would say it's it's weird I think with editing it's very intuitive in terms of like I mean my process I'll give you my process ups for going through footage just so that's because I generally some of the the higher profile products I've done is like I'm given you know here's like 30 hours of footage and can you make it into like a 60c Sizzle reel so typically like how I would approach that is like there's no glamour behind it but I I watch every minute of that of the footage but what I do is that I log it just by typ out the time so typically like people will give you like a transcript I generally don't think it's that useful it's I think it's actually more useful towards the end of the edit but the reason why it's not that helpful is because in my mind with every shot or audio clip there is an inherent ranking based on the strength of its ability to be used in the edit so when someone says like um I'm trying to think of some of the opening lines of some of the sizzles I've done that have been really uh powerful I did a a national commercial for Joe Biden and the opening line of it is your vote is your voice now if you seeing that on a transcript like your vote is your voice I don't know like it like that I would probably read over that but the way that this guy said it was like so heartfelt so when I was going through all these hours of footage like I put that in red and bold that's like my like you know I use I just I kind of colorcoded for like what is the most kind of significant and then when that what that does is that I have a lot of documents right I have like all these text edit documents that are just like spread across like a few screens and then from there I build uh the radio edit and based on the stuff that's in like red or bold and I can kind of put that through so it can be like a cohesive story so you build it on kind of paper first based on like the strength of the sound bites and then the visuals that are also strong and then in terms of the editing you just start laying it into like the musical track for the um for the Biden thing we like we they license on Days song like rise up which is like a very kind of powerful orchestral type song um and yeah and then it's just it's kind of based on intuition in terms of like what shots kind of cut together yeah I mean that part's like a little bit more intuitive I feel the other part is a little bit more analytical the editing I feel like is a little bit more kind of intuitive just based on doing it for so long but was also very important in that I know you started talking about the Kan and ass one but that's I think the bind one is maybe a little bit more interesting because that was a project where I really tried to drill down with them with like who is the audience for this piece and who's actually gonna be watching it for the K Nas the audience for those sizzles is generally the uh people that are buying the ads at K Nas and this is like hey we've sold you know this we have like a huge reach like do you also want to reach our audience so it's like it's very specific for the Biden one it was uh African-American voters 18 to 35 that were deciding between V voting for Biden or not voting at all um and yeah so obviously there were going to be some things like with that kind of demographic that were going to be important some value some shots we wanted in there and some stuff that like just wasn't going to be relevant um but there was a really interesting question that came up during the edit where I and it was like on the first call with these guys when I won the job I asked them like what is the thing that like has gotten this demographic app to vote and they're like well Obama like okay yeah that definitely checks out so in the edit I remember I used is like a sound bite from Obama and when I showed them this first cut they're like yeah Gabe obviously the Obama thing got to go and I'm like really why yeah that was that was like one of their first notes I'm like why does it have to like well Biden you know they we want to kind of separate him he's like his own president I'm like I understand that but the first thing you guys said to me was like that the that Obama has gotten out this demographic to vote so why would we not include it and eventually they came around and we ended up and it you know it lived in the that went out yeah wow okay and typically on those sorts of projects those sort high level ones how many versions do you end up doing the Biden one was cut over I think I worked every day for about 32 days on that and one of the reason I mean one of the reasons being was there were a lot of assets so we had a 90 a 60 and a 30 and then each of those have like an Instagram like a 9 by 16 like a 16 by9 a one by one and then beyond that each of them had uh different end cards like this ad is paid for by this organization or I'm I'm Joe Biden and I Endor this message so there were actually there were 27 different versions of that commercial that ended up going out so for that one that I would say was definitely a little bit more refining I think everyone was really on the same page with that one I mean those were I the reason why because we had had a lot of conversation on the onset about like who's the audience everyone was like kind of aligned with the same thing um with KY Nast they're very decentralized the company itself is like a lot of middle managers so with K Nast you'll have like 25 people that are decision makers so K and ask like those SZ will be cut over months and they'll actually usually swap editors on them and then swap them back all right so here's a question for you I'm Miss I always maybe I'm making an assumption here that you might be a little bit more left leaning seeing as you're creative what would happen if you got given a trump thing to cut could you do it or I mean you might well be into him but would you think that would affect your ability to cut that if it was something you didn't believe in for example I honestly probably wouldn't do something that I didn't believe in uh to be honest like which it might be a position of just having a little bit more work and not needing to do that but yeah I gener like like you for instance like if it was like a cigarette thing which actually like I did get Linked In with um yeah like Philip Morris I guess I got like LinkedIn with them but yeah I mean generally stuff that I'm not like that I just don't believe in I probably wouldn't uh I probably just wouldn't do it yeah wouldn't do it fair enough fair enough um one of the other things oh what I was going to ask you was what do you think apart from technical lots of practice technical experience what other attributes do you think you need in order to be a really good editor what sort of personality traits do you think you need I think you have to just be very personable and pathetic because as so I'm a free like I've worked a lot as a freelance editor I've never been at a company and when you do that obviously I mean most of the film industry is just people that are Freelancers right so for commercials it's like every project is kind of like a one offer hopefully you form like a longer term relationship with that company but it's a lot of different clients but so that places a lot of emphasis on the first few calls you have with that client when they're considering you and I think it like it's trying to kind of understand why are you why are you even getting the con in the first place because usually it's because like something has gone like very terribly wrong at the company right usually they had a person that was gonna do it that's a staff and they got sick or they're just so overwhelmed so like you're pretty much kind of plugging this whole uh that they have right so I think it's kind of understanding those circumstances on like a really deep level and then yeah yeah the what's interesting about that is I think some people often uh might might assume that editing is a very kind of solo job that you can go off and do in a dark corner but clearly it sounds like you've got to have that good relationship with your clients in order to give them what they want and get hired again to do more work yeah and it also leads to you can charge more because you have more Authority right so like you can actually talk about like the result that it's going to get and you get involved in the creative process so one it becomes more collaborative versus like you get hard drive and they're like just cut this thing like you can start having conversations that are more serious about it so that you're not just like a worker which just goes back at the beginning that you're providing value because you actually understand like who is the audience I mean that's a question that I like to ask on every call at the beginning like who is your audience who is this for because it's going to completely aect that the way I do it yeah um uh so the other thing I noticed on your uh website was that you've got development director on there can you explain what that means what's a development director yeah I got hired by uh ABC which like for is just like American Broadcasting Corporation in the US but it's pretty much like one of our like kind of big channels and they had me put together a uh like a true crime series essentially uh so they handed me a log line which was something like um people that have been accused but never convicted of crimes um and one of the cases they had was was um Stephen hatfill who was accused of the anthrax attacks on America this was like post 9911 when people were getting like white powder in envelopes and they're like who like who's doing this right and it pretty much they traced it back to a specific lab where this like Guy Stephen hatel uh worked for and he was pretty much like accused but they could never actually prove it but what happened with this guy is like his home was raid on live television uh his like pretty much life was compl pretty much turned upside down the FBI were pretty much tracking him for like two years straight but ultimately the case was dropped because they had no actual concrete evidence against him um it was pretty much following cases like that so my job as a development director was to put together a slate of like 10 cases that we could follow and research it and I put together for these guy for ABC like a Sizzle and a deck pretty much assets so they could sell the show oh right okay and is that a uh is that something you'll do again is it something you enjoyed doing or is it just sort of yeah I mean it's something that I do a lot of time for my own work right when I'm like developing a feature film or a TV show idea stuff that I've done in the past where I like for my own stuff right I'll put together those kind of development materials like obviously you've got to develop the script you've got to develop like a one sheet you've got to develop like a Sizzle reel you've got to develop like a deck so it's just assets that you need to be able to hand it off to you know someone that's a decision maker that can you know yeah actualize the project all of those assets again this is something I said the other day those assets are so important aren't they in not only for people to understand what you're selling or what you're trying to create but also it helps you figure it out doesn't it you put all that stuff together and it sort of makes it all a lot clearer um talking to stuff you've done yourself so you wrote and directed a short called I'm going to say the man who sleeps backwards in time which I watched a trailer for which looks really good really high-end quality stuff um love a bit of side Wi-Fi so so how did that come about how did you fund it how how did you get on with that yeah so I think in 2015 I had the idea for this movie called The manag Le backwards in time so I wrote a feature film and yeah I tried for many years to get that project actualized and that one of the routes that it led me to was meeting with um one of the producers on this film called Swiss army man um which is the Daniel's first film they just did everything everywhere all at once that won all the Oscars but their first film was Swiss army man I met with one of the producers and he was very helpful in uh moving the project along in terms of like you know I sent him the script he enjoyed the script he liked the deck and he was like well gave to you a budget for this so at the time I didn't have the budget for the feature so I hired a Lime producer um actually this wonderful woman named Tracy Landon who's now G on to like be one of like the EPS of maestro um and is like just very talented at what she does but but she pretty much broke down the script I mean she put together like a 100 page budget for the screenplay right which is essentially what someone considering financing it or producing it would need uh to do so I and then also a schedule as well that correlates with that um so I went back to him and he said this is great but he's like I think you need um as a first-time director you probably need some sort of visual like a short film or a Sizzle or something that kind of sells this show this uh this project so based on his kind of encouragement and he wasn't the first person to tell me that but he was the first person that was taking the project seriously in terms of like we'd had like a series of meetings where he just was like kind of like investing more in the project so when he said that I was like I should probably just pull the trigger on it so I yeah pretty much I wrote the short film version of the feature and we ended up I mean the process of making that film was absolutely insane uh partially because it was shot in the strangest place in America which is called uh it's called The Sultan sea it's just like a very odd place outside of Los Angeles and it's I think our location scouting day was about like 117 degrees Fahrenheit um you'd have to translate that into Celsius but it was like yeah it's like it's it's very it's very severe yeah um the other challenge too is that making a short film project in La comes with its own series of chall because it's very hard for people to take like a short film seriously and something obviously I wanted was like a high level of production value a high level of crew member that was working there so I ended up reaching out to this producer um named Liz Destro who's produced like the little hours life after beath um a few like Sundance projects she was someone that knew Tracy so I kind of got connected in through that way she came on to Executive produce the project and from there I was able to get um some producers but it was it was very very challenging I remember the first uh producer we got yeah I mean pretty much like I had five without going into too much detail we had five producers separately greeted to the project and then drop out um over the like like 10 weeks um for various reasons um the first person was because they signed up for four days and then they reread the script and when Gabe this is your short film is pretty much like a feature like it's just there's it's too like there's too much scope in it I can't help you and then the second person um came on for a week and they called me up after that week and they said Gabe I hate to do this but I'm a feature director as well and a feature project that I've had going on for a while just got green lit and the investors only want me to shoot during your shoot dates oh and then the third person uh had produced this film called angels in the angels in Outlaws with Luke Wilson which went to South by um he came he was on for 24 hours and then he called me up right after my first location scout in LA and told me that he'd gotten a divorce and he wasn't going to be able project Y and then the fourth person uh came on and worked with me for four weeks in LA and was like a bulldog and we met up every day and then with I think 12 days to go before my shoot they called me up and they said Gabe I've always wanted to be a director I have this music video and the band only can shoot during your shoot dates so I have to drop it um and then so yeah with like 10 days to go I pretty much brought on this amazing woman named Courtney gleon uh who's a producer in La has worked on like um a bunch of projects but yeah and she she helped me bring it through the uh the finish line but yeah it was a very yeah it was the pre-production was yeah like fundamentally insane yeah nothing nothing really really good is ever easy to make is it it's always if it's going to be good it's going to be a lot of ball lake and a lot of stress so how did you if you don't mind me asking how did you get that short film funded it was it was self-funded based on all the editing work that I've been doing pretty much right right okay self funded that's cool um so now uh we to move on to the industry which is this uh newsletter is it daily or weekly it's it's a daily newsletter daily wow that's a lot of work so uh daily newsletter tell me about it what what made you decide to do that and tell us what it's about yeah so I was having a big problem with the way that I was getting my film industry news I felt like it was extremely chaotic and overwhelming in terms of like the quantity of deadline variety IND like just a massive amount of news that it was it's just very hard to sort through and make career decisions based on that I mean as an independent filmmaker I'm like I'm definitely looking for who are those upand cominging producers that I should be watching out for right like and it's It's just tough I feel like I'm yeah I just felt like I was always behind but at the same time I was getting all these wonderful newsletters like the morning Brew or the hustle and I was like why isn't someone doing this for the film industry so I pretty much started this yeah daily film industry newsletter that uh yeah it pretty much just breaks down like what's happening in the industry from everything from industry news to we do actor spotlights we have a Indie filmmaker Spotlight we have an international section we have a festivals and resources section um and then we also have a space where filmmakers can kind of promote their own work as wellers so definitely worth subscribing to that and if I wanted to subscribe to that it's is it the industry. net or.com I'm trying think the it's ww.the industry.co co. right cool everyone must um subscribe to that I hope you enjoyed this week's episode if you want more advice from industry professionals who are out there at the moment working or you just want to listen to some cool stories from film sets from around the world then please do[Music] subscribe