If you wouldn't mind, I have a question regarding that and I'd rather not post it as a topic because I don't need ten kinds of noise. Owning that there is dynamism with respect to the production of material but that it's still an almost exclusively who-you-know-who-knows-you closed society, I've been wondering about an alternative path.

Long story short, I got a properly accredited hardcore film degree when I was 20, I'm now 28 and working on a CRWR BFA that I've weighted towards screen and television, and I'm also in Vancouver. This is the standard advice I've been given by my local instructors - who are themselves qualified and produced writers - which is that the best path to attracting an agent to you is to 1. enter your short screenplays into writing contests and/or produce them into short films, and then start shopping yourself using a reel of shorts.

This makes sense to me for a lot of reasons, most of which are obvious. The earliest rookie mistake in the whole science of filmmaking is when people speak in abstracts, get into debates about the colour red, instead of grabbing some paint swatches. I think this applies in every single aspect of the craft, in its respective format.

Does this seem like a viable path to you? Because it feels right to me, but no one ever really talks about it.