Job, career, education in foreign countries

[50AE]

This is country works this way - you are smart, you get smashed. You want to develop, everyone tells you how stupid you are. I can talk about it all night.

 

My hope is to go in a foreign country to study or to work, or both, because I can't study without working. Somewhere where I can practice what I dream of - pyro. Somewhere I can really learn something useful. Here the educational system is complete bullshit.

 

Now I work as a SFX pyro in cinema, but it's not reliable about income. There are not always movies, I have to sit doing nothing for months sometimes.

 

What I ask for, is your advice, where and can I develop myself in the foreign, start working and eventually doing a career. If you know what I mean

[taiwanluthiers]

You have to deal with immigration issues that would prevent you from doing or following your dreams. There are all kinds of hurdles immigration agencies put in place to stop foreigners and only certain jobs or preferred, or more like certain jobs, particularly unskilled jobs have absolutely no possibility of immigration.

 

EU is difficult in that you need a skill that doesn't exist in the EU to qualify for a work visa.

 

Also you will find that your freedom doesn't necessarily improve by being in other countries. Also, America has their tentacles of influence in so many countries that they practically tell them what laws to pass.

[Potassiumchlorate]

He already is an EU citizen, so it's considerably easier for him to work in another EU-country than for a non-EU citizen.

 

But yes, the grass is not always greener on the other side. When I was a kid I admired America, because I thought it was like in the movies. Today I realize that that was an illusion. In most respects except gun-ownership they have less freedom than Europe. It's even extremely hard to get into America as a tourist compared to other countries.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Potassiumchlorate

[eb11]

i live in america and right now it is very hard to find a job luckily i own my own business but until things change in this government the economy will not improve

[Mumbles]

The desire for a good education AND the ability to practice pyrotechnics is going to limit your options. Certainly both are possible within the US, as they are in several other countries. I've generally gone to the top of the line schools here, and largely succeeded. I don't know what your previous educational background and accomplishments are, but typically at the places I've been being even an elite foreign student (top few in your class) isn't enough to get into these sorts of places. You need to be very elite when compared to the country as a whole. That said you don't need to go to the sorts of places I have.

 

I would take a look where you'd be happy. Find areas or countries that would allow for you to practice pyro, get a good education and training, and allow you to succeed overall. If you send me a pm, I'd be happy to try to help out with the US at least. I know a lot of people who go to school here from a foreign country on a student visa and are able to successfully gain permanent residence or citizenship.

 

I can make no promises about the job market, nor do I have any idea about how working with explosives in the US as a foreign individual works. The license application only makes note that illegal immigrants cannot be licensed. If you want to go to school and get a job, you probably will have to go through the appropriate channels anyway.

[Arthur]

Now I work as a SFX pyro in cinema, but it's not reliable about income. There are not always movies, I have to sit doing nothing for months sometimes...

You ARE doing something that you want and love -movie pyro! Most of us would love to do that but there is not the work for all of us.

 

What you have to do is market yourself -tell lots of good people that you exist -have yopu a show reel yet of work you have done?

 

What MAY add to your work load is having another SFX skill electronics, animatronics, wire work (moving things by hidden wires) prop making. Now if each offers you a few weeks you have lots of weeks of work.

 

As for moving abroad, travel costs, and visas can be hard to get especially working visas. When you get to another country you have to get known before work will fall your way, and that costs money too.

 

Look in great detail at KFTV.com -it's a huge international web resource for the movie industry. There are no listed SFX houses in Bulgaria -that either says that there is no need there or that one hasn't developed there yet

Consider the EventHorizon training course in England ( http://www.precisionenergetics.co.uk/training.html ) but it is totally British regs based and tied into the British Movie trade union training system. The skills will transfer to your country but the regulations will not. The course is four days and will cost about £1000 with food and accommodation plus transport.

[50AE]

I'm not seeking a place with green grass, but a place with more opportunities. There are many things in my country that repulse me. First, college graduation is becoming more and more needed to find even simple jobs as a seller in a marketplace. 85% of high schools graduates go to college. The most of them do it because "they don't know" they just want a diploma.

 

The colleges have become a business. The learning program is horrible. Very old, full of crap. Most students that graduate are incapable to work, they have no qualification. You might become a PhD and then work as a coiffeur or cleaner. Secondly, the country has no industries. Nobody cares if you are smart or talented, we just don't need them. We need criminals, lyers, cheaters, mobs. This is the way money is made here - f*** the other. We had so much industries in the past. Machines, electronics, fruit, you name it. Now everything is closed. No one gives a shit about it.

 

I'll give you some examples to make you understand better.

 

A graduate master engineer electronics speciality cannot tell me in what units are measured capacitance and inductance. How can people like that even graduate and claim themselves engineers?

A doctor (7 years of study to become medic) earns an equivalent of 250 euros a month, which salary makes me wonder if he can even survive with this kind of money. It makes you think, did he deserve it for studying 7 years?

 

Very talented people just run away. It's very common their talent gets valued in foreign countries, but not here. Many Bulgarians have invented genious things, but not in their own countries, think about it .'

 

 

I am not saying I love studying. What I want to do is not waste my time. If I find a place where I am sure can get a real qualification and have a good future, I wii try to do my best.

 

By the way, our movie SFX company is very successful. I will let myself to tell you why - because we do many illegal things. Not morally bad, but illegal by law. This is the way it works in this country. One day or another, you have to break the law to suceed. Then you figure it out how to manage - bribes, connections and sweet talk. It becomes a national habit.

Foreign SFX crews have loved our effects and liked working with us. No, I'm not saying we are better because we are smarter. But we can break the law the way they maybe cannot in their countries.

 

Thank you for rich and kind posts, I just have to think more about it.

Edited September 20, 2012 by 50AE

[Arthur]

Talk to KFTV see what it costs to get your company name listed in there as pyrotechnicians in Bulgaria, Edited September 20, 2012 by Arthur

[NightHawkInLight]

I like the thought of moving to Brazil myself, but I really haven't looked into it enough to say anything credible about it. Any and all developed countries (IE, the ones with a lot of jobs and education) are going to be strict about pyro. With development comes less manual labor and less makeshift solutions to problems, and so people lose the ideology that you should be able to make and fix things yourself. By outsourcing work to 'professionals', people begin to trust others less with potentially dangerous things such as pyro and guns for example, and believe those also should only be handled by 'professionals'. That thought is quickly reflected in politics, in the leaders that people choose, and soon after in the law.

[mikeee]

If you make it into the United States, North Dakota & Montana are looking for people

to work at the new Bakken oil fields. Lots of new development in those two states.

Many jobs are paying big dollars. There might be a need for H.P. experience.

It does get cold in the winter months in that area of the country.

North Dakota also has Pyrotechnic companies & hobby club.

 

Mikeee

[taiwanluthiers]

I myself would like to move out of Taiwan because nearly everyone goes to college and skilled work isn't valued here at all. I have a difficult time finding work as a luthier because most people buy cheap shit then throw them away when they break. The industry is dominated by electronics/computers/whatever and if you're not a part of it, then it's hard. People here work silly hours for pocket change and their employers make bags of money while they themselves struggle financially every month living like a college student yet working 12 hour days, on top of having to be on call 24 hours a day. Thing is there are no "Schengen Agreement" in this part of the world so any other country I go to (even across the strait) requires hard to get visa. I kinda envy EU citizen in that they can migrate to any EU country they like...

[NightHawkInLight]

If you make it into the United States, North Dakota & Montana are looking for people

to work at the new Bakken oil fields. Lots of new development in those two states.

Many jobs are paying big dollars. There might be a need for H.P. experience.

It does get cold in the winter months in that area of the country.

North Dakota also has Pyrotechnic companies & hobby club.

 

Mikeee

 

I hear housing is extremely hard to come by in those states because of how many jobs there are. Even finding a place to park a trailer is tough, according to a few I know that were trying to do just that.

[Arthur]

Remember that all "lands of opportunity" will have lots of people in the queue! You will need lots of experience and a good international reputation before some of these places will let you look at a work visa application form. In some countries working on the wrong visa can get you into great problems.

 

Personally I have a degree, I've had membership of three different professional bodies as my career moved through that sector, I've usually had a full time job and a part time job as well. People who want to employ or engage me want me for what I DO, not what letters I have after my name. Get out of the "Get a Degree" mentality and think about getting into the work and getting a great reputation.

 

Added;

study http://www.imdb.com/ in depth see if it shows you films in the making and gives even the name of the production company. If you send out one letter a day you will start to get responses if and when people need your skills in or near where you live.

 

Added more;

https://secure.imdb.com/signup/index.html?d=IMDbTabNB it's expensive but it has all the names and addresses!

Edited September 21, 2012 by Arthur