To be fair IMDB should not be used to determine crew on films. Their lists are incomplete to say the very least. I only appear listed on two films on IMDB - there's a lot of films I have worked on which don't mention me.
One of the films I worked on lists only 46 crew members, despite have a main unit on-set crew bigger than this.
-Gumboot
Thank you for your post. I am too new and uninformed on all the players here to know all the details of each poster. Sorry for that. I will learn.
How wonderful to run into someone in the same field. Your point is of course excellent as well as being timely. My first FX gig was 'Alien 1'. Ridley Scott was with his girlfriend at the NASA Kennedy Space Center (NASA-KSC) and saw my work and wanted to know through my director at the time, Bob Schulman,
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/mar/HQ_04099_Shulman.html
My dear friend and mentor, if I would be interested in digital work for him on a movie he was planning called 'Alien'. He put me in touch with him and from there they all got me in touch with Apple Computer for software I would need to learn to animate. It was tough. Hard learning curve, which you know.
But I learned from Ridley and others that often times you will not get credit in credit roll, and if you are a free agent you will not be listed at FX databases. But the up side is that you get more work.
Great post and please explain more on your end of the game.
Thank you,
RAMS