From what I've seen, the best way to be "hooked up" as a filmer is to film like crazy, and social climb your way to filming with ams/pros/people that will likely be ams or pros soon, and making edits that will get seen in the right situations. Ideally, if you are filming enough and get crazy enough footage that you have filmed well (including angle, stability, colors, all sorts of shit 99% of people with a camera won't even think about) and somebody will ask you for a clip, and if they like it, they'll start asking you for them more often, and eventually they'll suggest you to people who want to do something but don't have anybody to film it.
From everything I've heard though, you'll probably get more money and respect working at McDonalds unless you are one of like 3 guys in the entire industry. A few years ago I heard in a very friend-of-a-friend way that the main filmer for foundation during the "That's life" era worked exclusively for product. I've also known people who film and send invoices (aka charge per clip) and they claim some people pay, and others just claim they will and never do.
Basically, film because you enjoy the art of it, not because you think its a pathway to a legitimate career.