I've never worked on a set but I am a writer/director who has had multiple films in the biggest festivals in the world.

I got started by making crappy short films with friends. I started just as DSLRs were becoming commonplace, so access to good looking video was easy and fun to experiment with.

Eventually the crappy short films turned good and the majors festivals started playing them. Then I had been writing feature scripts for some time at that point, so when I started getting attention from big producers, I had stuff to show.

Then came the big agents, the studio meetings, the big budgets (relatively), and all that kind of stuff. All in all, I've been at it for ten years and I am now making my first $1m+ film.