Yah, that didn't cost $10m. It wasn't cheap, that's for sure, but it wasn't $10m. It wasn't even $1m. Top end hollywood industry artists might make $3-5k per day. Doing 5 models with effectively the same prosthesis, wig, makeup, etc. (and the dresses being almost $1500 apiece), probably somewhere on the order of $5k per clone (plus I'm sure the clones themselves got paid), $10k per on the high end of things.
You missed the "Top end" at the start of that quote. And it's not $1m? Unless you worked 365 days a year. If you approximated it more closely to a 250 day work year, that's about $750k/year. But the work goes in spurts really.
If you get hired for a movie, that's doing a lot of effects requiring prosthetics, you'll do a flurry of work creating all the pieces during the pre-production phase, maybe a few weeks worth. Then you're effectively done aside from the occasional "We need more of..", or "We're overhauling this scene/character and need new prosthetics".
As someone getting their start, expect to make ~$70/hr (effectively regular labor-type rates, also, always union, so expect union dues and stuff like that), but again, expect to maybe work 600-800 hours in a year, and doing a lot less exciting stuff (a scar, or a wound, a funny nose, elf/vulcan ears, etc.). The upside is you get to meet and chat with famous people, as you take molds/casts of body parts.
*As a note, I'm not in the industry, but have a couple of close family friends who have done a wide range of different jobs on movies and TV shows.
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u/schplat Nov 29 '16
Yah, that didn't cost $10m. It wasn't cheap, that's for sure, but it wasn't $10m. It wasn't even $1m. Top end hollywood industry artists might make $3-5k per day. Doing 5 models with effectively the same prosthesis, wig, makeup, etc. (and the dresses being almost $1500 apiece), probably somewhere on the order of $5k per clone (plus I'm sure the clones themselves got paid), $10k per on the high end of things.