[Fmpro] Working outside L.A./ relocating to Tampa Bay, Florida

[Christopher Alpiar]

Embrace your local scene, be active locally. That and stay involved  
with as many libraries as possible. You wont be hired to write custom  
scores for films in LA or NYC but you can still do a lot of good  
stuff. Being in Tampa you should get involved with the local  
entertainment folks, Busch Gardens, Disney, etc. and all the cruise  
lines as well. Also I would suggest learning spanish and getting in  
touch with salsa, cumbia, meringue, calypso, souca and all forms of  
Caribbean and South American music forms. Latin Dance music and Salsa  
is the mainstay of the music for South Florida, but it has many many  
flavors, there are hundreds of styles of Cuban salsa alone, much less  
various South American flavors. But you are going to the place where  
caucasian and african american people are the minority, so being  
excited to dive into the Hispanic and Caribbean culture and music will  
take you far ;) I think you will find the music business saturated  
with Latin pop music and if you don't speak Spanish it will be  
difficult to be involved. There are small trickles of other musics  
there, and with quite a few TV shows being produced in Miami, there is  
a lot of big business down there. But again the clique that runs that  
scene is almost exclusively Cuban or South American. So understanding  
that culture, politics, music and language will set you apart from the  
other non hispanics. Understanding why the majority group of Florida,  
Cubans, are vehemently loyal to Cuba and refuse to leave that culture  
even though they hate Castro even more and willingly have left family  
in Cuba to escape his rule, and all of the emotional experience that  
comes with and around it. I miss South Florida often, other than the 2  
inch+ flying cockroaches affectionately known as Palmetto Bugs... But  
it is a really wonderful place where you can learn so much about those  
cultures which still are strongly independent and not homogenized and  
yet still all co-existing in the hispanic melting pot called South  
Florida: Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Virgin Islands,  
Puerto Rico, and of course all the major countries of northern and  
Eastern South America: Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Suriname, and even  
further reaching areas like Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Paraguay, these  
places are all represented strongly in South Florida. Its really amazing

Good Luck with it Todd, sounds like a lot of fun!


On Mar 4, 2008, at 12:07 PM, Todd Burns wrote:

> This is a bit hypothetical, but would any of you fine folks care to
> comment on working outside a "major" music center like Los Angeles or
> NY? There's a possibility we'll end up in the Tampa Bay area. My
> current situation isn't location based, so (in theory) I can move to
> anywhere with a   power generator and a high speed Internet
> connection. But, sure, that's a little scary. Any work in that area,
> and maybe nearby Orlando?
>
> Thanks! Really!
>
> Todd Burns
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Christopher Kennedy Alpiar
Cinematic Composer
www.alpiar.com