100% freelance here.
I worked fulltime in TV many moons ago, then had a fulltime job with freelance on the side for 14 years. Because, y’know, bills and health insurance. But I when back to full freelance a few years ago, and thankfully my wife’s salary and benefits cover the basics and then some.
The benefit to keeping employment, and filmmaking on the side, is that your living expenses are (hopefully) covered, and you can use your evenings and weekends to work on what you want to work on. The downside is that your time availability for freelancing or working on your award-winning feature is really limited and not exactly under your control.
The challenge with being self-employed, whether freelancing or starting your own production co., is that you have a to run it like a small business. And when you enter that world, you have to build that business from the ground up. And to do that, you basically plan to sink all your revenue - including tax refunds - back into the business for the first 5 years before you can figure out if you’re finally making a livable profit. It changes how you file your taxes (itemize them with a Schedule C). And of course you don’t have benefits or retirement built in, so you have to figure those out on your own if you don’t have coverage through a spouse.
Being self-employed means being your own boss, which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You still have to appease your clients if you want continued business. And you have to take on the paid work wherever you can in order to have time and money to work on your own stuff. But you do still get a little more control over your work schedule. And being able to edit at home with beer in the fridge and without having to put on pants is one of the positive side benefits.
There’s always a tradeoff.