Interview with Hunter Williams

Next up, I got to interview Hunter Williams. I was really excited about this one! Born and raised in New Zealand, Hunter, 21, is passionate about creating films that share stories of the human experience. His films have screened from Baghdad to Times Square and he has worked alongside David Blaine, Addison Rae and Chase Hudson, and produced brand content for Prada and Louis Vuitton among others. In 2020 alone, his work was viewed over 100 million times and his current clients have a collective reach of over 242 million followers (https://hunterwilliams.net/).

Briefly tell me about yourself.

My name is Hunter Williams. I’m a 21-year-old filmmaker from New Zealand and currently based in Los Angeles; I’ve lived here for just over a year. My main passion is social impact focused documentary and at the moment my primary job is producing social media video content for influencers and entertainers.

Directing a short film in New Zealand

When did you become interested in filmmaking and what inspired you to pursue filmmaking? Any formative memories?

Previous to being a filmmaker, I actually wanted to be one of those guys that stand on the outside of the rubbish trucks [garbage trucks] while they were driving. Aside from that, I have only ever really wanted to be a filmmaker. I’ve known that this is what I wanted to do since I was eight or nine years old. The first memory of when I think I decided this is when I was with my parents who were in the car and they were talking about Peter Jackson, who is a really accomplished New Zealand director who filmed the Lord of the Rings series and The Hobbit series. They were talking about him and I was just asking them, “Who is Peter Jackson? Like, who is he? What does he do?” They told me what a director was, I want to do that. I suppose it just stuck, and that’s what I wanted to do since.

Tell me about your move to LA. I’m sure it took a lot of courage to make such a big decision. How has it been?

Though I have always known I wanted to be a filmmaker, I have always struggled with figuring out exactly what the path to get there is. I came out of film school, and I went back to square one because I had no idea what to do now. Throughout high school and throughout university, you have these milestones you need to hit. Each year you are working toward a set of exams, gaining certain grades, completing set projects. However, when you leave, you have complete freedom. That comes with its own set of challenges, and for the first time you are completely responsible for guiding yourself. I made the call to move to the US with a “what’s the worst that can happen?” mentality. Turns out, a global pandemic is pretty bad, but aside from that I simply needed a way to get home if everything fell apart. With an open return ticket and a couple thousand dollars, I flew to LA, found an apartment, bought a car (a necessity in LA) and got started trying to find work. It immediately became clear to me that LA was all about who you know. I started networking, trying to meet people and trying to find a job and then finally got one after about three months of working.

How many jobs did you apply for?

About six months before the actual move, I started applying to jobs. In the end I applied to between 150 to 200 on LinkedIn, Indeed, Craigslist, etc. I only heard back from two of them. One was the Ellen Show saying no and the other one was the L.A. Clippers also saying no. On LinkedIn, you can see the number of applicants for every job and for entry level jobs in the film industry here in LA, it was oftentimes between 4000 and 5000 applicants. I knew it would be competitive, but I think I seriously underestimated just how saturated the industry is here. It’s really difficult to stand out amongst that crowd of people with a one-page resume. The whole process began to get extremely disheartening but I’m so glad that I persisted because the experience I’ve been able to get here in LA has far exceed my expectations.

How do you make yourself stand out in such a competitive industry? Any advice to anyone interested in filmmaking?

That’s a tricky one. I believe there are two sides to that. There is how you make yourself stand out in terms of your craft then there’s also how you make yourself stand out in terms of career and the business. The industry is so competitive, there is a real art to making good content but being able to support yourself financially by doing that can unfortunately be a real struggle. One thing that I found when I was networking, with the aim of finding a job, was that I was never really successful when I had an ulterior motive. When I was talking to people with the intention of trying to find work or, in a basic sense, "get something from them" I think there was this underlying sense of desperation that was a real turn off for some people. It’s funny, because the first job I ended up getting in L.A. was from the one person at a conference who didn't have anything to do with film. It’s not like I was trying to deceive anyone I was talking to, but as a 20-year-old moving to the U.S. by myself, there was a lot of pressure to try and find a job as there is no safety net here for people in my position. My advice, from my limited experience, is just be genuine and talk to people. Develop relationships not just for your own personal gain, but because you genuinely have an interest in the person you’re talking to. Now standing out creatively, that’s something I suppose I’ll be able to tell you in like 20 years because I’m very much still figuring that out.

What’s been your favorite experience since you moved to LA?

The first job I got in LA was working for David Blaine, a magician and endurance artist. My third day on the job we went skydiving and that was pretty crazy. From spending a few months fretting about being able to support myself in LA, to suddenly within 72 hours jumping out of a plane, that was pretty awesome. The other one was Blaine’s Ascension project in Arizona — that was one of the craziest experiences. To witness someone work so hard for something and then to see their lifelong dream come true in front of your eyes, that’s a priceless experience. Shooting Ascension

Where do you see yourself in five years? How about ten?

I saw this question just before we started this call and I’ve been thinking about it for a couple minutes. It’s such a difficult one to answer, especially with the velocity at which the world is changing around us. As I mentioned, I’ve always known where I want to go but in terms of how to get there, it’s something I really need to clarify in my own mind. In 10 years, I would love for my passion projects to be my full-time job. Whether this happens in 10 years, whether it happens in 20 or 30, or even 50, my dream is to get to a point where I can make whatever I want to make and make a living from doing that. That’s the ultimate goal.

How has it been doing social media video content?

Funnily enough, I didn’t intentionally head into this line of work in the beginning. I simply ended up in the right place at the right time and got to meet some really great people who I’m loving being able to collaborate with. I have found it fascinating to see how these people work, what makes them tick and what makes them the people that millions of kids around the world look up to. I love that my work is reaching a big audience and that people really love to discuss and talk about what we put out.

Filming with Addison Rae's family