CareerView · Career Advice Podcast

Film Producer - Hannah Ngo

·26 min·1 clip

A $10,000 short led to state funding, then an $80,000 short for SBS, then a $900,000 web series for SBS On Demand.

1. CareerView focuses on a film-producer career path, with Hannah Ngo answering student questions about film and television work. 2. Host Niru Deshamal interviews Hannah Ngo, a producer at an award-winning film and television production company, because her path from accounting to film school shows a non-linear career shift. 3. The episode asks what a film producer actually does, how to enter the industry, and what the trade-offs look like in pay, hours, and career progression. 4. Hannah says she did not always want to produce and only found film after taking a media major, travelling, and enrolling in film school after an accounting degree. 5. She says producing felt right once she read the major description, even though she did not know what a producer did at first. 6. Her typical day includes emailing composers, reviewing publicity stills, reading contracts for development money, and negotiating writer's-room terms for different projects. 7. She says her schedule has stretched into "eight to six plus Saturdays" even when she is not shooting. 8. Hannah says film jobs are learned on the job, but film school gave her connections and experience after she had no high-school film background or industry contacts. 9. She says an accounting degree and a legal degree are useful because producing involves numbers, contracts, and negotiation. 10. She advises students to put "the feelers out there," work from the bottom up, and use production-office roles, short films, and funding opportunities to get started. 11. Hannah says she struggled after graduating in Western Australia because there were not enough jobs for her cohort. 12. She spent a year in retail while making short films, some funded and some not, before industry attention started building. 13. She describes a pipeline from a $10,000 short film, to an $80,000 short that SBS picked up, to a $900,000 web series for SBS. 14. She says that same pathway led to freelancing on bigger productions, including being a producer's attachment on The Heights for Matchbox. 15. Hannah says she later worked in-house at a Sydney production company, returned to Perth for Iggy and Ace on SBS On Demand, and then moved to Melbourne. 16. She says one surprise was how much of the industry is "made up" and how different each company can be internally, as long as work is done safely and within budget. 17. She describes producing as creative problem-solving that depends on how much she can take on, how well she organizes herself, and how quickly she reacts. 18. The conversation is direct and practical, with many concrete examples, salary figures, project names, and candid answers about burnout. 19. People considering film production, short-film pathways, or behind-the-scenes film careers would likely find this useful. 20. Listeners looking for a polished glamour story or a fixed career formula might skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at the uncertain path from accounting into film and television.

CareerView follows Hannah Ngo's move from accounting into film and television and keeps the question simple: what does it actually take to leave a safe degree for creative work?

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Why you'd press play

You want a realistic path into film producing, minus the glamour filter.

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