Hello folks, my name is Ferzan Kanat Aygen. I would leave if I were you because I’m a very boring person. Here’s the bullet-point version of my biography.

*Born: 08/16/82 in Istanbul Turkey

* Had a nice childhood with great parents

*Always had at least 4-5 pets in the house while growing up. As a result I love animals.

*Love death metal and rock music.

* Hated school

*Studied two years after high school to get into university to study Systems Engineering (same thing as Industrial Engineering). Here in Turkey it’s not easy to get into university, you have to sit a preliminary exam with 1 million other people. Got just enough points to enter systems engineering. Turns out I made a big mistake. I wonder how people manage to study systems engineering. World’s most boring major ever. Probably got the lowest GPA (.3 out of 4, if I remember correctly) in the history of that department. Was in heavy depression before the first semester was up.

* Somehow switched my major to Radio Television and Cinema Studies after losing a year at engineering. I’m probably the only person in this country of 75 million to do so.

*Loved the new major.

*I was the top student of the class for four years.

*Decided to start a hosting company during my second year at university, because I’m not particularly bright. Researched for a year and learned all the database, php stuff.

*Decided to create world’s largest metal music site, created the website, added about 40,000 pages of data, lyrics, news, pictures, videos etc. It took a full year to do that.

*Opened the hosting business while I was in my third year of university. NetHostOne was the name of the hosting company. It wasn’t a local company but rather an international one. Paid $3,000 to advertise in a major hosting directory, plus other expenses for servers, support personnel, software, etc. In the end got about 4 customers and earned about $150. Sold the customers to another company in exchange for hosting. Closed the shop after one year.

*World’s largest metal music site, metalnow.net started life during my struggles with my hosting company. Google didn’t like it very much. Nobody entered the site. 40,000 pages got about 100 visitors a day. So much for the world’s largest metal music site. Closed that down a year later.

*Enrolled in the army to complete compulsory military service after graduation. Took 5 months. Most of the time spent working very hard to do nothing. And I’m not joking.

*Learned that I’d won a scholarship to study marketing at Malardalen University in Sweden. I was one of the two people in the class of 60 to get one. Spent a year there. Loved Sweden. Loved the people, especially the girls. Girls didn’t like me very much. One girl held my hand once in a bar. That was the highlight of my year. Loved how organized things are in Sweden. Didn’t like waiting in queues for everything very much. Sweden is like Rivendell, highly recommended.

*Wrote my thesis, got my degree then returned to Mordor.

*Tried to become an assistant to DOP (Director of Photography) so that I could get my foot in the door of the movie biz.

*Learned that DOP’s don’t answer their phones when called from an unknown number

*Learned that DOP’s hire their 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins as assistants. Fuck nepotism

*Took a Fuck-It-All pill.

*Made a decision to open my own visual effects business in the future.

*Decided that people needed to see my skills, so I started to work on a show-reel to show off my work. It’s basically a 1-2 minute video showing off your best stuff.

*Decided that the show-reel would be finished in 6-8 months. This decision was made at the same time I was learning all the software.

*I finished the show-reel 2 years later.

*Opened up the company. This time as a sole proprietorship.

*Started going to firms to show off my work.

*People were very impressed. Got a few jobs.

*Showed my work to commercial producers to get VFX work.

*They said they’d had bad experiences with small companies and they would rather pay 5 times more to big old establishments. Just couldn’t convince the ones I managed to get a meeting with to hire me.

*After 6-7 months I decided I wasn’t going to be very happy working for people whose sole purpose is to squeeze the last drop out of a deal rather to develop a long term win-win relationship.

*Saw some of the very interesting things that people will do to get you to work for peanuts. A common one is offering you regular work in the future (and 99% of the time it’s imaginary work) if you agree to work for peanuts right now. Not good business.

*Last drop was a cable commercial. This was going to be my first commercial. They needed 3d work. During the process I came close to beating the shit out of the director. Got a call next day. Learned that someone was coming round to collect the reference cables they’d given me to model, for a “photo shoot”. Gotta love how honest people are. Anyway, got the call that I was fired two hours later. The commercial never aired on TV.

*That was it. Took a Fuck-It-All pill.

*Moved out of my house.

*Moved to my parents’ summer home.

* Started working on Shadow of a Soul.

*I hope this too doesn’t turn into another gigantic clusterfuck.

*This is the story as of 12/14/2011

*I hate having my picture taken. Here are two of my old ones. I’m pretty much the same except for some white in my hair and a few pounds added as a result of stress eating, which I hope to lose.