We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dugan Bridges a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dugan, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
This is probably the number one question every filmmaker asks. How you do you earn a full time living at doing what you love? The answer isn’t just an A-B-C solution like becoming a doctor or lawyer. It’s way more fluid as a creative. I think the clearest strategy to realizing that goal is to get your foot in the door at a company with an internal production team if you can’t get your foot in the door at an agency or production company. Work your way up over the course of 5 years and learn as much as you can about the production process while you also figure out exactly what you want to do (DP – Direct – Sound?). Then when you have enough experience shooting, editing, etc. the people and companies you’ve been working with are the most likely to become your first client when you go freelance.
Dugan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a filmmaker whose work includes multi-national brands, distribution by Amazon & TimeWarner and features in the NYTimes & MovieMaker Magazine. During my career, I’ve had 5 projects reach distribution, received over 100 Intl Film Fest selections while winning 45 awards, and garnering millions of social media views.
After studying film production at the University of Georgia, I moved to NYC where I cut my teeth directing projects for Samsung, Disney, and Katy Perry as the Director of Production for a large marketing firm. Switching gears, my feature The Little Tin Man was one of the first 10 films to crowdfund $100k through Kickstarter and went on to reach worldwide distribution with Gravitas Ventures.
Leaving for the West Coast, I freelanced with Dreamworks, Lionsgate, and Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back To The Future) on the lot at Universal Studios. Several of my screenplays caught the attention of Hollywood, most notably an Oscar-winning Producer of The Departed.
Now building a family, I’ve moved back to my hometown of Athens where my company – F7 Film Distillery – is stationed out of the Innovation Hub at the University of Georgia.
Have you ever had to pivot?
To be a director you are always going to have to pivot. You’ll look up someones IMDB and wonder ‘why haven’t they made a movie in 7 years?’ That’s because most of us have another way in which we’re making money. For myself, I was eventually hired to train non-profits on how to produce video for web content. It was a really cool gig that sent me all over the U.S. and the World. It was a great path while I was getting Directing/Producing gigs every once in a while. But once I continued to get better at Directing, eventually I got enough work where I could leave the side-gig behind.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
So I moved to Los Angeles after living in NYC for 7 years. None of my contacts worked out. I was pretty jobless in LA for 2-3 years and was going into debt. I asked my mom ‘why did you let me get into this career?’ I was completely ready to throw in the towel. I continued to pray and was like ‘God you led me into this, help me.’ Within a year I wrote a screenplay that miraculously got me representation and an invitation in Warner Bros to meet with an Oscar winning Producer. I didn’t end up selling anything but it was a huge confirmation that God was with me and that I wasn’t out of my mind trying to pursue an industry that can be soul sucking and difficult.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.F7FilmDistillery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/duganbridges/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duganbridges/
Image Credits
Dustin Rademacher