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Hello! I have a very bouncing-around-Plinko-style industry career. I got my MFA in 3D animation back in the early 2000s and got hired on at a production company doing a PBS children's show. I was actually hired on as a PA at first and got tons of experience basically doing G'n'E work. Definitely not PA stuff. I did prep for a month and then was a swing during the whole production. After the shoot I was hired on full time to aid in the animation ("Lomax: The Hound of Music"...it had 1 season ha). Also did some work on Between the Lions. My goal was always VFX and the production company's goal was always to produce our own stuff. After getting hired we started on our first feature with a very modest $500k budget. It was a PG-13 teen horror romp that wasn't very good. BUT it provided tons of good experience. I wasn't actually supposed to be on set for production (just post) but ended up filling in as key PA after someone dropped. That was fun except super frigidly cold. Mostly outdoor night shoots and this was during a 10 degree cold snap in rural Mississippi. I also ended up getting to 1st AD during our reshoots. Great experience. I helped with VFX on that and it was awesome. Shortly after that our production company merged with an ad agency as their production arm and my career swerved into the VFX and motion graphics industry for mostly commercial work. The production company still existed as an IP holding company and we worked with all of the films coming through Mississippi to aid in walking them through our incentive. MS has a pretty robust 25-30% *cash back* (not tax incentive) program for productions (film and episodic) over $50k as well as games and interactive industries. That work is still going on and is actually stronger than ever believe it or not. But back to 2010 - while still working at the ad agency, the movies that were coming through that we dealt with (mostly in the smaller $3M-15M range with some even smaller $500k-1m in there every once in a while) always needed some level of post. So, in addition to my ad agency work, I got to do some level of VFX (from just "additional" to main level work and even being on set supe from time to time for LA studios that were doing the work) on about 7 or 8 films through those years. I also moved up to creative director at the agency (over the course of about 8 years) and go to do tons of directing as well for our live action stuff. It was a very well rounded experience getting to do tons of different jobs on actual "real" sized productions. Probably my favorite was Octavia Spencer's "Ma" - maybe not a great film, but an absolutely blast on set. Octavia Spencer is an absolute gem and is just as nice as you'd expect her to be. I spent a lot of time on that set shadowing the super from the post production company in LA. I got to actually do a lot of cleanup VFX work on that which was useful in terms of getting use to fitting into a larger pipeline. I also did a lot of the digital onset props. I created a wide range of real facebook and instagram functioning prototypes for them to use onset so Octavia Spencer isn't trying to use a blank phone and guess where things are. (and then I got to do the replacement work when it all changed in post lol). That actually led to a further side gig of doing more digital propwork for a few more movies (Queen & Slim, Deep Water and some others). Then COVID hit and I haven't heard from the propmaster that got me those gigs. Hope he's doing well. Anyway from there, I eventually moved away to North Carolina to be closer to my aging parents. I'm a creative director at a production company that does work for larger tech and pharma brands, but we also have a hugely booming immersive department that's doing some super exciting work. None of which I can talk about really. I still dabble in my VFX work from time to time, bust mostly when I'm just mentoring the younger kids on what to do.
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Mar 25, 2024 15:10
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TadBradley posted:I had no idea Mississippi had such a robusto incentive! I'm from Arkansas, and when I moved to L.A. I don't even think I was aware there was a scene in New Orleans at the time, much less Mississippi. This was back when Louisiana was the tax incentive belle of the ball. Some part of me wishes I'd stuck around down south, I might own a house at least. Yeah it's pretty big! It's 25% and 30% if you can utilize more local crew and spends. Of course the biggest issue is that Mississippi doesn't have a huge crew base so they usually come up from NOLA. But that's kind of part of the attraction now... I think NOLA is getting back on its feet a little and so you have two nice incentives side by side with more cash back (and some location variety) in MS and then crew and tax incentive in NOLA. Lots of different locales with the gulf being there too. It's a nice spot! Never going to be Atlanta but it's got a niche carved o And yeah I would totally have gone to LA if I were you. Even if you eventually move back. It's still the best place to go at least network and get a solid foundation even if you do move back. The most successful people I know from Mississippi (one is a great actor and upcoming director - he's in Dream Scenario and the other is a super talented VFX guy that is the Unreal lead on Francis Ford Coppola's new epic Megalopolis) both went out to LA. So...it's worth it. BonoMan fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 00:27
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