I don’t know how it is for everyone else in New Mexico, but we have a ton of bids out there right now. Some people get discouraged because they put a ton of energy into every bid and a relatively low percentage actually turn into work, but we love bidding jobs even if they don’t come through. For one thing, each bid is like falling in love again, and who doesn’t like falling in love? Just as with romantic love, we’d be ecstatically happy in a long term relationship, but the realities of business are that we have to be more promiscuous in business than in romance. The really big reason for loving bids, though, is that we don’t get work without putting out bids and even though we don’t expect to get 100% of the jobs we bid, we do expect to get some of them–and have been validated in that expectation.
A lot of people are talking about 2012 as though it’s the last year of a viable film industry in New Mexico because Breaking Bad and In Plain Sight have both announced the next season (#5 for both shows) will be their last. One of the most exciting things about the bids we have out there is that they’re all what we consider to be local, home-grown productions. Sure, there are actors, some key crew members, producers, directors, etc, from out of state, but for the most part these are far more New Mexican projects than they are Hollywood projects. And that, to us, signifies a sustainable film industry.
We’re excited. And it’s great to fall in love, too.
