Shame on you, crazy producer!
I used to feel flattered every time I received a phone call from a movie producer telling me they were looking for an animator, and of the hundreds of websites they found, they were impressed with my work. Back then I had no job, me and my wife had little money in savings, and scarily watched how our bank account approached the "no money" line with every day that passed by. I was desperate and naive, so I got caught in some of the worse deals you can imagine, if you can call them deals at all. Working hard for pennies that didn't cover my bills, or didn't even arrive. I am glad those days are over.
Now I laugh when a film maker calls me asking for my services, telling me how talented I am, they want me on their team because they have this great project in their hands that is going to make millions, Blah, blah, blah. The crucial word is "budget", and it usually comes handcuffed with the word "tight", which means that they can only pay two or three hundred dollars for something that normally would cost several thousands.
The funny thing is, they don't even offer the $200 at first, they offer... listen to this, your name on the credits list! Like a friend of mine said "your name will appear next to a million other names on a screen that scrolls at 25 km/h!!!"- Thanks Tato, you are absolutely right. We are not talking about a Star Wars film here, we are talking about a movie 99% of the population will never know about. The occasional spider crawling on the theater screen gets more recognition that some guys on the credits, and unless there is a way to convert movie credits into Walmart coupons, that is not going to put food on my table.
If people are willing to work for nothing, that's fine as long as there is honesty from the beginning. I did it a couple of times and I met great people that way. But please don't offer movie credits like they are some sort of gold coins. They don't shine, they don't pay the bills and I can't tell my wife "Babe, today we are having movie credits for dinner".
Now I laugh when a film maker calls me asking for my services, telling me how talented I am, they want me on their team because they have this great project in their hands that is going to make millions, Blah, blah, blah. The crucial word is "budget", and it usually comes handcuffed with the word "tight", which means that they can only pay two or three hundred dollars for something that normally would cost several thousands.
The funny thing is, they don't even offer the $200 at first, they offer... listen to this, your name on the credits list! Like a friend of mine said "your name will appear next to a million other names on a screen that scrolls at 25 km/h!!!"- Thanks Tato, you are absolutely right. We are not talking about a Star Wars film here, we are talking about a movie 99% of the population will never know about. The occasional spider crawling on the theater screen gets more recognition that some guys on the credits, and unless there is a way to convert movie credits into Walmart coupons, that is not going to put food on my table.
If people are willing to work for nothing, that's fine as long as there is honesty from the beginning. I did it a couple of times and I met great people that way. But please don't offer movie credits like they are some sort of gold coins. They don't shine, they don't pay the bills and I can't tell my wife "Babe, today we are having movie credits for dinner".
posted by Luis Medrano at 12:39 PM
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