Ragged Wife
During my early twenties, I had an amazing opportunity to work in a film school, located in a working movie studio that produces roughly 6 films a year, and it was very exciting, enjoyable and magical for me. Stepping inside a real NC24 sound stage with production sets strewn around for the first time left me in awe, green screens here and there, production assistants scurrying to find actors or collecting and handing out props, and actors walking around. It was a unique experienced for me because I didn’t go to a film school or majored in mass communications back in college, allowing me a glimpse of life inside a production outfit. You are surrounded by creative people, living and breathing films, free-flow of ideas are happening constantly, making it a brain-stimulating place to be, it was truly amazing. Also, I had the chance to work with a team that came from a production background, my boss was an industry veteran and he shared with his team his vast knowledge and experiences with us. Most production, even studio-backed and big-budgeted movies, shoot on location in certain cities where they can save on production cost because shooting and doing production in Hollywood are pretty expensive. Most popular cities include Vancouver, Toronto, Prague and other cities that offer location shooting when constructing large sets are not feasible plus these cities provide non-union labor force unlike Hollywood; both reasons help bring production cost down. There was this one time, my boss shared a story about going to Texas and hiring an austin video production outfit for a TV commercial he was working on while he was the head of a studio company. He further explained that if the shoot was done in California or in New York, it would have cost him an arm and a leg for the same production value that the austin video production team did.