“Oh the places you’ll go” features the amazing career paths of VACorps alumni. In this inaugural post, Nicole Beaudoin describes her steady rise within the international film industry that first started in South Africa. Nicole participated in a film and photography internship in January of 2007 and worked as a production assistant at Stillking Productions.
“After my internship in Cape Town, I graduated from UW and moved to Austin, TX to pursue a career in the film industry. I worked on some great projects, both smaller independent movies and larger movies such as Richard Linklater’s BERNIE and post-production on Terrance Malick’s TREE OF LIFE. I was able to work in various positions moving up the ladder in the production office, culminating in line producing a low budget feature film GROW UP TONY PHILLIPS, which premiered at SXSW 2013 was released Fall 2014.
“In 2013, I was a local hire for TRANSFORMERS 4 for the Austin portion of the shoot, and the production office team ended up bringing me along for the entire shoot to Michigan and Chicago. It was an incredible experience to work on such a “big” blockbuster type movie and see first-hand the craziness and the scale of something where they are closing down city blocks in a major metropolitan area, there are hundreds of extras, and constant explosions.
“I have since moved to Los Angeles, where I have been roughly a year and a half. The amazing line producer TRANSFORMERS 4 was offered a SVP position in Physical Production at Paramount Pictures and asked me to be her coordinator. I never thought I would work for a studio, and it really is a dream job and amazing learning experience to walk through the historic gates of Paramount every day and be a part of the moviemaking process on so many films.
“However, I will never forget my first time on a professional set, and what a wonderful peek into the world of production it was for me. That experience was during my internship at Stillking films in Cape Town. The whole experience of an internship in Cape Town was such a growing experience for me. I look back on my time there and see it as a period of exponential growth and a big booster to my confidence.”
My time here in Cape Town is sadly came to an end. Luckily, I left with the intention of coming back very soon and that is the only thing that helped me cope with my departure. “The routine of getting...
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Julia participated in a film & photography internship in Cape Town with VACorps in 2017. “Oh gosh this is tough goodbye…Never before have I experienced such amazing energy from a single place and its people. Cape Town has totally blown...
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Fletcher joined the VACorps program in January 2020, as part of his gap year, and participated in a film and photography internship. “When I was starting the process of planning my gap year, there were two places that I knew...
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