The fear of losing jobs to an increasingly digitized world is not new, at least not for professional artists. Anthony Clark Pierce, who will be featured at this year’s Lake Placid Film Festival, was in art school more than 30 years ago when one film sent a shock wave through the practical effects community.
“In the last year that I was in art school, ‘Jurassic Park’ came out and everything went digital, and we all thought we’d never get work,” Pierce said.
Thankfully, however, practical effects involve vast, varied, and versatile abilities that can be transferred to many other settings.
“One of my art school professors said, if you go down to Orlando, you can always find work in theme parks, you can always find work in stage shows,” Pierce said. “These places will always need the skill set you just learned.”
Pierce followed his professor’s advice and moved to Orlando, where he quickly found work restoring amusement park rides.
“My first job was refurbishing the Mad Hatter teacup ride at Disney,” he said.
The teacups were eventually mended, and another job opened, and then another. His hand-bound portfolio is a substantial archive of everything from sharks to zombies to Tony the Tiger.
As Pierce described, “I’ve been working in practical effects in one way or another ever since I started, and I still love it. I love the variety of projects I get to work on.”