Mark Romanek — American Director born on September 18, 1959,

Mark Romanek is an American filmmaker whose directing work includes feature films, music videos, and commercials... (wikipedia)

The trick is falling in love with something enough, and being excited enough by something, to want to make that year and a half or two year commitment and wake up every morning at 5 to go deal with a whole day full of problems to get it up on the screen. You really need passion.
Actually, the British boarding school experience turns out to be not that exotic.
I stopped making videos and commercials for a few months before I started films just to reset my clock because so much narrative filmmaking is a sense of tempo and rhythm.
I have these ideas that people go 'Oh, that's cool. I'd pay to see it, but I'm not gonna give you $25 million.'
Here's my tip: Have your production hire the best hair stylists on the planet to do your films and commercials, then casually hint about how great it would be to get a trim during lunch break.