Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rodolphe Pierre-Louis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Rodolphe, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

My parents raised me in a way that made it easy for me to believe that I could be whatever I wanted to be in life. I don’t know exactly how intently they tried to do that, I just know that as I was growing up, there was never a sense that something was off the table as far as the career or life I wanted to pursue.

There’s this stereotype that immigrant parents just want their kids to be a doctor or a lawyer, but I never felt that growing up. Whatever path I chose, they seemed perfectly fine with letting me choose it.

My dad bought us a video camera when I was 10 and that’s what started my obsession with filmmaking. While being a film director isn’t a traditional path for a kid growing up in Haiti, they never discouraged me from it and even supported that dream in many different ways. My mom was the one who bought me my first professional camera after I graduated high school to allow me to start my production company at the time.

I definitely now know that they didn’t always understand me or could see what I saw. They’ll admit sometimes that they were worried I was going to grow up to be a deadbeat! But what they did really right was give me the room to dream and to truly believe I could do anything or be anyone as long as I was willing to work hard for it.

I’m forever grateful that they raised my brother and I with this mindset.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name’s Rodolphe Pierre-Louis and I’m an entrepreneur, filmmaker, and Visual Effects artist. These days I spend my days focusing mostly on the entrepreneur part of the equation as I am the Founder & CEO of ActionVFX.

ActionVFX is the Visual Effects Stock Footage company. We’re home to the largest library of production-quality visual effects assets in the world. We help our clients create realistic visual effects shots faster and easier by providing them with pre-made stock assets that they can license from us to use in their projects.

Let’s say a VFX studio needs some explosions for the latest Superhero blockbuster. They can go on our website and browse our library to find the perfect explosions. Once they license the footage, they can bring these assets into their scenes to complete their shots. This video explains it all so much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HrxAAcB2dM

I’ve wanted to make movies ever since I was 10 and my dad bought my brother and I a video camera. When I was 14 (2006) was when I discovered that it was possible to do VFX on your home computer. As an action and sci-fi movie fan, I was excited and jumped right in. By the time I graduated high school, I definitely had a lot of practice under my belt.

When I was a freshman in college (2011) I started a YouTube channel where I primarily made Visual Effects tutorials. I started slowly building an audience, so like most entrepreneurial people, I wanted to monetize that audience.

I’ve always been fascinated with VFX Stock Footage as a product. I love the idea that you could create an effect that others can use in their projects in order to not need to start from scratch. So in November of that year I released my first VFX asset pack to the world. The product’s price was only $15, so I wasn’t rolling in money or anything. But I was making about 3 sales a day from it, and for a kid in college, that was a big deal.

I kept creating new effects packs until 2015 when I decided it was time to build a real company out of this. Up to that point, Hollywood wasn’t using the effects I was making, and I wanted to take things to the next level and start creating products that could be used at the highest level of production.

Lots of work and sacrifice later, ActionVFX launched to the public in June 2016. As they say, the rest is history. These days it’s rare to watch a movie or a show that don’t make use of our library in one way or another. Projects like Avengers: Endgame, Stranger Things, and the Call of Duty video games have made use of ActionVFX.

What sets us apart from our competitors is that we’re not just obsessed with quality, but also aim to have quantity. Our mission statement was literally to build the best and largest library of VFX assets in the world, and we take “best and largest” very seriously. At this time we have over 9000 individual assets on the site, with many more to come.

The goal is for us to be the only place someone needs to visit of all their visual asset needs, from the biggest explosion you can think of, all the way to something small like steam on a coffee cup. Visual effects can be time consuming and expensive, and the ActionVFX library helps artists create awesome shots faster. The best quote I’ve ever heard about ActionVFX was “ActionVFX gets me home to see my family.” Words like that make the hard work worth it!

One thing I’m proud of during our journey of building ActionVFX is the commitment to creating products that were a cut above the rest. Many times at the beginning it would’ve been easier or cheaper to cut corners, but I kept telling myself “If we’re not the best, what’s the point of even doing this?” Now I realize how crucial that mindset would end up being for our brand.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I currently have 2 business partners, Renaldo Pierre-Louis and Luke Thompson. Renaldo’s my brother, so the story of how I met him isn’t very exciting. I’m just blessed to have happened to have a genius software engineer as a brother that I could beg to build the ActionVFX website.

Luke is currently our COO, but at the beginning, that wasn’t always the plan. We randomly met at a local VFX meetup once, but we didn’t talk much. We simply became Facebook friends and would comment on each other’s stuff sometimes.

During Summer 2015 I had the first shoot for ActionVFX planned. It was a pyro shoot where the plan was to drive to Chicago to capture some real large scale explosions and fire elements. One guy on the crew who was supposed to capture behind-the-scenes footage dropped out at the last minute, so I needed a new BTS guy.

I posted on Facebook to see if anyone wanted to drive from Tennessee to Chicago with me to go blow things up, and Luke volunteered! We didn’t really know each other at the time, but he was in! We got along and worked together really well on that shoot, so while I was in no position to hire anyone full-time at this point, it was a thought in the back of my head.

Eventually in early 2016 he became the first person I hired, and to this day the best person I’ve hired. I truly believe that God brought us together because I did not have the hiring skills back then to bring in someone that good! Now he’s our COO and one of my partners, and I think everyone won with that relationship.

Prior to working with him and having a team, I remember often desiring to copy myself. I used to always think “If only I had 3 of me, I could take this business to the next level!”. Working with Luke helped me realize how flawed of thinking that truly was. If everyone in the business was like me, then not only would they all have the same strengths, but also the same weaknesses. What makes a team strong is that you complement each other. Some of the things Luke loves I absolutely hate, and some things he does effortlessly would take me hours.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Without Kickstarter, ActionVFX wouldn’t exist. My initial goal was to fund the whole thing myself. The plan was simple: I would take all my business savings at the time (from my years of selling stock effects online since college) and spend it all on a big shoot in Chicago to film real explosions and fire with some pyrotechnicians who worked on Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.

Once we captured the best looking explosions known to man, I would sell those effects and make millions! Great plan, right? It almost worked accordingly, except the effects we shot in Chicago just weren’t good. It wasn’t the fault of anyone except that I had greatly underestimated how hard this was going to be.

So here I was on that long drive from Chicago back to Tennessee with no money and no awesome effects to sell. What now?

Eventually I had the idea to do a Kickstarter campaign and see if actual VFX artists would help fund this idea. I believed the need for ActionVFX was obvious in the industry. There just wasn’t a lot of options when it came to stock assets, and you could easily spot many movies and TV shows reusing the same effects over and over again.

I felt that artists would get behind our plans to build the “largest and best library of VFX stock footage in the world”. Our Kickstarter acted like a pre-order essentially. Depending on which tiers the Kickstarter backers chose, they would get our products in return. One tier even promised them a lifetime access to all future products for only $500. Needless to say, that was the best $500 they’ve ever spent!

We’re very thankful for our backers because without them, we wouldn’t exist. Or we would exist, but not at this level. Kickstarter is great because if the project succeeds, both the backers and the founders win. Our goal was to raise $20K on there, but ended up raising $59K! With that money we were able to do some more successful shoots, and that’s what allowed me to start hiring employees.      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.actionvfx.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therotivator/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodolphe-pierre-louis-3349b956/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ActionVFXofficial

Image Credits
You can credit my headshot as well as all the BTS photos to Samuel Crowe. You don’t need to credit the visual effects shots.