Crni Vuk said:
hey DB, since you are one of those people here working with movies do you know anything about the use of concept artists with movies?
My older brother is an art director/set designer and has been for over thirty years. He started in tv, working on Dallas and McGyver - his first movie was 'Back to the Future'. He has worked on and helped create some incredible movies. Starship Troopers, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tears of the Sun, Hoffa, Bugsy, Hunger Games, Star Trek, Star Wars, Zohan, Big Fish, Inception, Heat, Pirates of the Caribbean, Last Airbender - the frikken list is endless.
He got his degrees in Art and then Architecture and he was a practicing architect for several years after college until he broke into the entertainment field.
It's a tough business to get into without connections. The Unions make it incredibly difficult to get in. You have to have worked on a movie for 90 days before you can join any of the unions, but you can't work on a movie unless you are in the union. Neat, huh?
Most folks get in by working as P.A.'s (personal assistant) which is code for slave who does all the crap work for some jerk that enjoys watching you squirm. That's if they don't boot you right before you get your time in - just for fun.
So, knowing somebody with connections is the main way folks get in. Or starting on low budget, under the radar of the union jobs like low grade crap tv shows or 'B' budget movies or indie projects.
Right now in Louisiana, there is so much work, the local union has cut the work requirement to 30 days and allowed 'permits' (folks not in the union) to work as long as they pay union dues and promise to join the union - as long as the movie company has made a good faith gesture of hiring any available union members in every category they are hiring for.
Concept artists work for the art department of the production company and are usually hired and finished long before construction hits the ground. Painters, plasterers, sculptors, set dressers, and mold makers are all artists who work for the Construction Coordinator.
Your best bet is to be hired as a P.A. for an art department and to suck ass really hard so that someone offers you a break and gives you an opportunity to work in your field. This is how P.A.'s are routinely abused with false hopes and promises to bleed them dry of all their hopes and dreams. Some folks do make it though, just to give the rest of those poor tards some false hope.
