Millennials Were Sold a Film Career That No Longer Exists

We did everything they told us. It still wasn't enough for a "Big Break"

Jul 07, 2026

Everyone is talking about the great millennial career crisis right now. But nobody is talking about what it looks like inside the film industry. Because inside the film industry, it’s a different story. Gen Z filmmakers are building audiences, funding their own work, and going direct to viewers, while many of us who have been doing this for fifteen to twenty years are still waiting for that “big break.”

I want to talk about why that is. And I want to be honest about something I have been resistant to for a long time.

We Did Exactly What We Were Told

The reason most millennial filmmakers are not doing what Gen Z is doing is not laziness. It is not a lack of talent. It is not even a lack of ideas. It is that we followed the rules exactly as they were given to us.

Be the first one in and the last one out. Be the person everyone depends on. Do the work, show your commitment, and the work will come back to you… or at least that’s what we were promised. That was the deal.

And so we did that.

For fifteen/twenty years.

We were loyal. We were dependable. We were genuinely excellent at what we did. We gave our twenties and our thirties to this industry with the understanding that it would be there for us when we needed it.

Then COVID hit. Then the strikes. Then what can only be described as Hollywood’s great recession, where thousands of us lost our jobs seemingly overnight. And this was supposed to be the moment in our lives when we cashed in. This was when all of that experience was supposed to pay off. Instead, we are the ones holding the bag. Making zero money. Watching the industry we dedicated the best years of our lives to shrink right in front of us.

The rug was pulled out from underneath us. And we are exhausted.

Gen Z Did Something Different

Here is the thing about Gen Z filmmakers that I have been observing, like us when we were first starting out they are gung ho and ready to devote their wholes lives to their films, they don’t have families or kids yet and according to Jon Acuff in his book Procrastination Proof writes, they are in their energy peak, so all nighters are no problem. That does not mean they are not more talented than us they just have the knowledge of watching us get it wrong and the energy to do something about it. They also don’t hold the same stigma’s as we do about social media and “content creation.”

And we could learn something from that. The problem is that for most of us, content creation has felt deeply cringe. The word influencer literally made us roll our eyes. We were trained to be artists, not personalities. We were trained to believe that the work spoke for itself, that self-promotion was beneath us, that the right people would eventually notice.

I kept asking myself why we were not doing what Gen Z was doing. And I finally got honest enough to admit that the answer was shame. We were ashamed of what we thought it meant (and a whole lot of fear, putting yourself out there is hella scary.)

What I Had to Release

I had to release a lot of things to get to where I am now.

I had to release the idea that building an audience online is somehow less legitimate than waiting for a studio to validate you. I had to release the belief that showing up on social media means you have given up on real filmmaking. I had to release the version of success I was sold in film school that no longer exists in the way it was described to me. I had to release all the judgements I knew I would be facing if I chose to put myself out there in an industry that prides itself on these very narratives of how you “break in.”

It’s time to stop playing their game by their rules and start our own game.

Which is what Ted Hope and many wonderful filmmakers on Substack have been talking about in the form of NonDē.

Hope For Film

Know thyself, be thyself (and commit to the lifelong effort of doing so)

Hope For Film is your quiet cinemaking go-to guru in the corner. Before you can ask the question, we serve the answer. But if you want the secret potion, you have to subscribe, be it for free, or in the way that gives you access to it all. Close to four years of work sitting here eager for you to explore…

2 months ago · 18 likes · 5 comments · Ted Hope

I had to be honest that the alternative, three side hustles that have nothing to do with why I became a filmmaker, was slowly taking me further and further from the work and the people I actually care about.

This is not about influence status. It is not about becoming a brand or a content machine or a personality. It is about building a community of people who genuinely show up for you because they connect with who you are and what you know. That community can help fund each others films. That community will come to your screenings. That “audience” is the thing Hollywood was supposed to provide but they never truly understood that we’re humans not just a number.

I would much rather share the knowledge that I have accumulated over the past 16 years deep inside the industry than stay stuck.

What We Actually Have

I think most millennial filmmakers have not fully reckoned with this idea, we are sitting on fifteen to twenty years of insider knowledge that most people never get access to.

The old way of passing that knowledge down is gone. The shadowing pipeline, the mentorship, the working your way up through the ranks and absorbing what the people ahead of you knew, that system has largely collapsed along with everything else. So the knowledge is just sitting with us, locked up, not going anywhere.

I think the answer is to share it right here. Not to promote ourselves or our projects, though yes, please do share those too. But to put out the real stuff. The things that only get learned on set, in the edit bay, in post. The things film school never covered. The things that Gen Z filmmakers are hungry to learn and that we have spent decades earning the right to teach.

We have an opportunity to do something the industry never did for us, lift each other up and build a new way forward together.

I Am Still Figuring This Out

I want to be clear that I do not have this all figured out. I genuinely do not know yet if this can replace the income that keeps so many of us trapped in the side hustle cycle. I do not know exactly what this looks like at scale or where it leads. I am trying to figure that out in public, which is uncomfortable, BUT I am doing it anyway (really really pushing myself out of my comfort zone.)

What I do know is that I would much rather spend my time here, building something real with real people, than grinding through work that has nothing to do with why I became a filmmaker in the first place.

If you are a millennial filmmaker who has been quietly going through some version of this, the exhaustion, the frustration, the slow realization that the career you were promised looks nothing like the one you are actually living, I want you to know you are not alone (say this a lot because I mean it.)

MY first step to starting to earn is a guide I’m working on TO BE CLEAR - it is 100% my desire to keep my newsletter completely free and to not turn on paid subscriptions, I think that actually defeats the purpose of sharing information to start this revolution, and especially when so much of it exists because film schools and traditional pipelines left us to figure out post-production on our own. SO instead I’m ideating new ways to provide value a la carte so to say. I’d rather figure out other ways to support my art and my family than put this knowledge behind a paywall.

what I look like every time I sit down to work on “content creation” and overthink it dramatically

That said, I am building something small. It’s called The NOTES Method, a $17 guide that walks you through my full framework of how I approach every film. Yes I totally did the cheesy thing and figured out words that would fit into “NOTES” that aligns to my process 😉 (I’m a sucker for a good acronym.) It’s got a one-page worksheet you can tape above your monitor for easy reference as you’re working through post, and a section on humility in the edit bay (for directors/producer) that I’m not sure yet if I’m keeping, still figuring that out.

It’s not a course! It’s just a first step, one I built because people kept asking for something they could actually sit down and work through. I just wanted to give you a heads up about it.

Either way, thank you for being here while I figure this out.

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