"Marvel Visual Effects Leader Pushes For More Women, Tells Newcomers ‘Fill The Gap’’
"Victoria Alonso, Marvel Studios’ exuberant EVP of visual effects and post production, told a roomful of VFX industry leaders this morning that it needs to invite more women into the industry, and onto the stage. And for entertainment industry newcomers trying to find their way into the business, she had simple advice: “fill the gap.”
“I love the fact that you allowed a woman to talk to you this early in the morning,” Alonso told the mostly male audience. “It’s better when the room is 50-50 (male-female). It’s okay to let the ladies enter. They bring a balance.”
Alonso was speaking in a Q&A before more than 150 people at the Visual Effects Society’s VES Summit on Saturday morning. The summit, being live-streamed online to VES’s membership around the world, urged young women considering careers as digital artists to make it happen, but said one reason she always agrees to speak at events such as the summit, San Diego Comic-Con and elsewhere is that young women need role models in notable positions. For her life, seeing (and eventually meeting) pioneering female producers such as Kathleen Kennedy made a huge difference in her career choices.
“I used to look up to Kathy Kennedy,” Alonso said. “I didn’t know who she was, but I knew she produced E.T. and Schindler’s List. When I had lunch with her, I told everyone in the office. I was like a dork. I was a mess. But she had tears in her eyes (when I told her), ‘There are hundreds of thousands of little girls out there who think you’re the bomb.'”
For newcomers trying to break in, Alonso advised that they look for the role in an organization that’s not being filled, whatever it is, and even if it’s not exactly what the person wants to do. Her first chance at VFX house Digital Domain came when the executive assistant to a company executive had broken her leg and the fax machine was too far away.
“Fill the gap,” Alonso said repeatedly. “I made a career of filling the gap. You will be what you’re supposed to be...”
http://deadline.com/2014/10/marvel-v...n-jobs-854447/