Be professional about it, don't be a dick, and people will generally do the same.
I can do that! :)
I can't speak to LA or the film industry but I can tell you my story.
At 25 I moved from my LCOL province to a higher one without a job. After university I could only get contract positions in my home province so I started looking elsewhere. No bites. I decided I just move and get the job once I got there. Within 6 weeks I had a full time job in my industry that I turned into a great career.
The dream situation. Thank you for sharing!
True - for above the line stuff and department heads. But with all the Marvel stuff, TV stuff, etc being shot in Atlanta there should be plenty of jobs and opportunities for someone in their 20s who is looking to break in. Those productions hire a ton of local talent.
This is why I asked what he was specifically hoping to do.
If it is to work in large studio films in the camera department (whether that means Op or eventually DP, etc) then there should be plenty of opportunity to build an impressive resume (and connections with L.A. people) within Atlanta before moving out to L.A.
The greatest irony would be to move out to L.A. in order to get a gig on the camera department of a Marvel film... and then have to leave your family for a couple of months to go shoot in Atlanta. :)
I'll do my best to answer this for you & anyone else interested.
Short answer: He doesn't know what he wants to do.
Long answer, and the real reason why he gives the short answer: His ultimate dream would be to write and direct his own feature film(s), get them in front of an audience, and have that audience (whether festival audience, theater audience, or otherwise) be truly entertained and respond positively. He loves stories, he loves directing actors, he loves the production process, and
he wants to entertain above all else.
Because he is a logical and unfailingly realistic fellow who wants a family and just so happened to be attracted to an artsy fartsy field where he knows he has a low chance of making his own distributed feature, he's taken steps to ensure that he isn't purely freelance/production-focused and unsure of where his next paycheck will come from. Since graduating from grad school, he's worked fulltime at a marketing agency (making $48k right now) and tailored his skills to trend towards the editing, coloring/grading, and post-production side of things so that he can get steady jobs with reasonable pay and benefits. He's also taken a few side steps to prepare himself to take positions as an adjunct film professor, something he's not done in an official capacity yet but is 100% academically qualified to do (the MFA in Directing is a terminal degree.) Every time I've suggested he try and apply to run coffee on a Marvel set, he laughs and basically asks "With what time?" He's not willing to sacrifice his current job for two weeks of being on a real set and a fraction of the pay.
The downside of taking this very practical career approach thus far is that he's becoming creatively starved and unfulfilled, whether he admits it or not. The film scene in Atlanta for non-actors tends to be less "I'll make fun short films on the side with my friends and constantly crank out new content because I want to be
creative!" and more "I want to make money from my camera rental business and be left alone. Let the teens run coffee on the latest Marvel films and starve, haha, n00bs." Productions may land around Atlanta for the GA tax breaks, but the homegrown indie/smalltime film scene--i.e., the people who create because they love it--seems to be crumbly and slightly inhospitable here.
Tl;dr
He wants desperately to be a starving artist but hasn't been willing to take the leap and starve. I think being a new husband & aspiring father is a big part of that.
If you have any questions re: living in Los Angeles (specifically near Santa Monica), feel free to ask me-- I'll do my best to answer. :)
You are incredibly kind, and your post is so helpful! Thank you!! I may very well take you up on that offer if & when we make this decision. You mention grunt work--see above for some insight into DH's thoughts about that. I, however, am fine with doing my version of grunt work just to pay the bills...if I have to be the breadwinner working at Chipotle for a couple years so he can fly, so be it.
One thing to keep in mind...great work situations rarely stay great forever.
Great point. Thank you. I tend to get complacent and need to remind myself I would have tried to get better than this job eventually, anyway.
The valley is cheaper but hot in the summer, which may not bug you since you're in Hotlanta already :).
Thank you for these great tips. Actually, it does bug me, deeply, but I'm willing to do crazy things for love. :) (I.e. My dream would be to live far enough north to be snowed in for a good portion of every winter. I consider anything below Virginia unsuitable for human habitation. ;))
OP: have you lived in the same city your entire life?
I have not. I lived in the same area in Virginia until 23, at which point I married DH and moved down here. It's been a bit over 1.5 years now.
You must also account for the possible outcome of succeeding and actually hating it/burning out. Your comment that your DH would rather die than work on projects he doesn't respect is a GIANT red flag IMO.
I hear you and
@AnnaGrowsAMustache loud and clear and have been sharing every answer with DH. Malkynn, see the above long answer to MrDelane for some more detail about DH's goals. I was being hyperbolic about "rather dying." He is absolutely not too snobby to work on projects he hates. He is, however, too practical to do grunt work for 0 pay. He might have to work on that mindset in order to make this successful.
We are not willing to sacrifice everything. We are not willing to sacrifice our faith, our morals, our relationship, or our dream of having a family. If this move unavoidably threatened any of those things significantly, I think I can say with confidence that we'd both pull the plug together. Immediately.
-Let's assume he loves his job then. I doubt he will want to leave just as he's getting his career off the ground. Will you be comfortable raising kids there and probably never owning a home? Are you OK being away from aging family? What would happen if you hate it and he wants to stay? I think it's prudent to at least talk through some of these issues. It's fun and exciting now, but how will it look when you are older and supposed to be starting your prime earning years and are still barely scraping by.
Yeah. This is my most serious concern. For him, I would live in L.A. for the rest of my life. But would I want to? Absolutely not. I don't think he wants to live in L.A. more than a decade, but a sudden career success could change that.
I think the solve here (hopefully) will be deciding on those ultimatum time-frames/goals, and theoretically still being able to draw on the L.A. network for future projects of his long after we've left it geographically.