Who made it?

Indietalk has been around a while and has 10s of thousands of members. Who amung us has become successful? By successful, I mean went on to work in Hollwood or other fully financed full time entertainment industry work. A CAREER. Directors, actors, make up artists, CGI artists, sound design.. Anyone?

The closest I ever got was 2 years creating the dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park ride at Universal. The closest I got in the movies is the time I worked uncredited for a day with the FX guys when Stephen King's Mini-series The Stand was being shot in Utah. I got to meet Stephen King. We became very good friends..... By good friends, I mean I said thank you to him when he handed my book back after autographing it. LOL....
 
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My audio post facility was doing just fine until Hurricane Ida deposited about six feet of water into my studio. Nothing huge, but I worked on a lot of very nice projects, didn't have a boss, worked on my own schedule (even if I did 50 to 70 hours a week), experienced a lot of wonderful creative frustration and had a lot of fun.
 
I made it for about a decade once, depending on semantics. It's kind of a long story. This is just a highlight reel.

Started out creating a review series for the Vuze Network, became the top draw in gaming, a major category for them, about 120k viewers a week.

Moved on to staff director at Machinima.com, at the time the no 1 channel on youtube. Produced a series about Mass Effect for EA there, did a series about "the scene" an international organization dedicated to creating next gen graphics.

Directed a feature film like Chronos or Koyaanisquatsi. Shot almost entirely in High dynamic range. It was called "Silicon Valley Timelapse" and played at local arthouse theaters. It had minor distro, and sold a few thousand copies. Maybe 5k. It was pretty bad, my first try at film.

Moved on to corporate filmmaker, and served as creative director on large international shows. Created media campaigns for Hyundai, Mazda, IBM, Cisco, Hard Rock Café, and many signage boards on the Las Vegas strip.

Made enough money to buy a Red Epic, the camera Jackson shot the Hobbit films on. Bought it in person from the inventor. Got my first stedicam lesson from Garret Brown the same week. Finally started shooting quality film.

Worked on many indie film projects such as "Red Herring" stuff in the 2-300k range, trying to get my name out amongst up and coming directors. might have worked but they all went broke.


Worked on more campaigns for large corporations. Advertisements, web pages, product showcase type stuff. Prototype construction equipment, and other random things.

Launched a film based on a Harry Harrison novel, moved into a huge mansion with a starter crew. Harrison died mid project, while multiple pending contracts folded simultaneously, and the operation collapsed from underfunding while we were still setting up equipment for the first test shoot. We were just an unintended casualty of a corporate merger, and another unrelated situation elsewhere in which one of our backers was swindled by a con man over the appearance of an artist at a music festival that also collapsed for that group because of the same problem. So one crook basically bankrupted 2 unrelated companies in one afternoon.

Lost my house, car, motorcycle, 3 jobs, and had to move because of that perfect storm.

Couldn't find scale work in the new area, ever. Started working for indie film productions in Chicago. Money was bad, products were worse. One useless vanity project after another.

Made a documentary film about a local area I could afford to shoot. Made back about 12-14k, ballpark. An ok feature film, but not worth the effort for the money. Sales were going well the first year, and we were on track for a win, second year covid hit. I tested positive for covid this afternoon. Second case after 3 vaccinations. All the physical sales points for that film lost all traffic during the pandemic, and profits dropped 95% in one year.

took a break for a few years, and rethought the whole thing ground up. Started putting together an animated web series. Realized I didn't actually want to do that, and that the money was going to be pretty uninspiring vs the workload. Went back to the drawing board, came up with the idea for Save Point. Working on that ever since. Probably my most successful project to date, in terms of actually creating unique content. If it takes off, it will pay more and allow more artistic freedom than every past job combined.

I guess all told I only had about 8 million viewers, not counting corporate online stuff, over the whole decade. I don't really consider that "making it", but I'm also aware that it could have been worse.

I'm still actively trying to crack the code. Day in, day out. We all know the definition of insanity, so every round I try something that's new and different, while building on the skills I've been investing time in all along. I've made it before, and I'll make it again.
 
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I'm still actively trying to crack the code. Day in, day out. We all know the definition of insanity, so every round I try something that's new and different, while building on the skills I've been investing time in all along. I've made it before, and I'll make it again.
I hope you do, Nate.
Remember what the bible says; God giveth and God can taketh away...... or some shit like that :)
 
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