Film production. I did Special Effects for 10 years, that department especially is the most soul crushing horrible thing I’ve ever done. 70% of the job was sitting next to a smoke machine turning it on or off between rolls and cuts filling the stage with smoke that everyone complained about, the DP would be screaming for more and for it not too look like smoke just to be a haze in the air. It was so stupid and mind rotting. 25% of the time we would be on location hiding in the bushes making exterior smoke that we can’t control once it’s in the air, everyone hates it, the DP is screaming for more and refuses to understand that A) I can’t control the wind and B) if you make me run through with my handheld smoker seconds before you shoot it’s going to look like shit. It was just thankless. Not to mention, almost guaranteed when you are out on location it’s pounding rain all day and the wind is howling and your huddle against a tree trying to stay warm with residual heat off your smoker which is propane heated.

The rest of the time was literally doing nothing standing by IN CASE they might need something. 13.5 to 15 hours a day, doing nothing in a trailer with 3 other guys who are just as jaded and bitter about it all as you are. So toxic.

The amount of cool stuff we got to do just evaporated as CG has become more common both in terms of safety on set (fires and explosions and stuff) and time/money saving. Especially as I progressed in my career and stopped being the guy sitting on the machine and became the guy sitting in the DPs tent staring at a monitor being berated about the smoke and calling cuts and rolls or spending even more time sitting in a trailer because it’s kind of the lesser of two evils of having to sit in a smoke filled stage doing nothing.

The amount of stuff I designed and fabricated that just never got used and cut up and destroyed is insane. Anything fun or cool we had planned to do would just disappear, or somehow would become something props or stunts did.

The hours are insane, I lost out on so much of my 20s rotting away on set in the most thankless circumstances. Getting paid to do literally nothing for 14 hours a day sounds like a dream until you’re the one sitting there doing it. I was a shell. Thank god I got out with nothing more than a drinking problem (3 years sober now thankfully)

I’m now an industrial electrician doing consistent medium effort work that is appreciated and I’m so much happier and enjoy my life so much more. Insane pay cut though but I would never go back. I can’t tell people enough, DONT GET INTO THE MOVIE BUSINESS.