Jeff Taylor(XIX)

I grew up in Baton Rouge Louisiana and have been an avid movie and television lover since early on. I knew I wanted to work behind the scenes after watching countless hours of entertainment tonight and making of programs. Shortly after graduating from McKinley High School I landed a job at Blockbuster video and immersed myself in a proper film education by watching as many things as I possibly could. After a few years I decided I was ready for film school and went to the University of New Orleans for their film program. This is where I landed my first on set experience through an internship program on the Film Runaway Jury as a wardrobe intern. Not exactly where I wanted but it was a start. I had fallen in love with photography and knew I wanted to work with cameras but had no idea how I was going to get into the coveted camera department, but I let everyone know my desire. Eventually I got a call for another internship in the camera department on a film called Stay Alive! After that there was no turning back I was where I needed to be. That job led to a little Sci-Fi film called Mammoth that ended up leaving the states to film in Prague, but also got me my ticket into the Local 600 in 2005. Shortly after my card came in the mail disaster struck in the form of hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was in a bad state and film production started to move to Shreveport Louisiana and so I went int the hopes getting my career started. With the recently started Tax incentive and the ease of filming in Shreveport the industry took off and I was able to land job after job learning from amazing technicians that were coming in from all over the world. It was the best way to learn a craft, every show was different and every person had so much knowledge to soak up. New Orleans rebuilt and eventually the work came back don there and I moved back after becoming a bonafide camera assistant with confidence and skills to back it up. Around this time I was also given the opportunity to work as a stabilized head technician with a company called All-Axis and learned another of my favorite things to do on set, complex camera builds that get the shot the director needs. I take great pride in figuring out the most efficient way to build the camera for specialty shots, and I look forward to all challenges. Moving up to pulling focus was my next step and it took a few years until I was fully able to transition, but once i did I never looked back and I am definitely in my happy place, whether its running the department on A camera, or supporting the A-team from the B camera, or even doing camera builds and leapfrogging cameras I just love it. I have been doing camera work for 20 years now and I am just as enthusiastic as I was on the first day.