Can film-program graduates afford to stay in Vermont?
Georgia Pantazopoulos, a 2007 graduate of Burlington College, currently works as a freelance lighting technician for commercial clients such as Seventh Generation. She finds that the best work strategy for her is to divide time between Burlington and Boston — and between practicality and creativity. “Boston has just exploded with work,” she says. “Part of it is tax incentives, and part is the wake behind Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. That film just hit a ‘gritty street’ nerve or something, because there are seven films scheduled to begin Boston production in February.”
To Pantazopoulos, the two cities can seem more like one. She often finds herself grabbing rental equipment in Massachusetts to augment the increasingly short supply up here. “People know that they can call me, and I’m in a position to grab what they need,” she says. “It’s one of the great things about the filmmaking scene in Burlington. There isn’t this catty unwillingness to help that exists in a lot of other places.”
