Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Massachusetts VFX Biz Gains Strength From Strong Incentives
variety.comGregg Goldstein Let’s face it: Massachusetts is not well-known for its post-production facilities. While there are a few impressive Boston-based companies — including Soundtrack Group for ADR/sound, EditBar for editing, Color Refinery for color and Brickyard VFX for effects — their efforts are mainly focused on commercials projects.
Most features and series that film in the state head elsewhere for post.But that’s starting to change, thanks in large part to state tax incentives becoming permanent last year, and companies including Zero VFX emerging as leaders in New England.“When we started in 2010, people would look at you very strangely if you said, ‘We’re doing our effects in Boston,’ because there wasn’t a ton of talent here,” says Zero VFX co-founder Brian Drewes. “The incentive has really started allowing us to develop a base of great artists.” And to create groundbreaking work: he says Zero FX is now designing “synthetic photorealistic humans” for what he calls “the largest execution of this technique ever done in features.” There’s no standalone tax incentive for VFX companies, “but we are able to leverage a piece of it for visual effects,” Drewes says. “For productions shooting somewhere like Atlanta or Canada, if Zero gets a piece of the visual effects work or the whole movie, we get a 25% rebate on any of the salary costs that we incur within Massachusetts.
We extend that to our clients as a 25% discount for expected salary costs, so it functions as if it’s a VFX-only credit.”Drewes cites the launch of “The Equalizer” franchise in 2014 as a turning point in attracting VFX talent from Vancouver and L.A., with more “coming from the colleges, technological research and high-tech industries here.” (A third.
Read more on variety.com