Dennis McCarthy
Vehicle Effects
Sun Valley, CA USA
"You have to be on a constant quest for knowledge."
Career Roadmap
Dennis's work combines: Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Building Things
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
If cars are your passion, read and learn all that you can and stick with it. Always strive to be the best in your field.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Associate's Degree
Automobile/Automotive Mechanics Technology/Technician
Arizona Automotive Institute
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
Growing up, his grandfather owned a service station and he was the first person to show him how to fix a carburetor.
2.
His parents used to “threaten” to send him to a technical school as a punishment for working on cars all the time, not realizing that was all he wanted to do in the first place.
3.
At an early age, he opened up his first auto shop; it was a “hole-in-the-wall” garage that could fit only one car at a time and all he had was his dad’s old Craftsman tool box.
4.
About 10 years later, he got into the entertainment industry by chance after he was asked to build an elaborate car for a movie.
5.
He quickly realized that this was what he was supposed to be doing—he sold his auto shop and opened up a new business dedicated to making custom vehicles for movies like The Fast and The Furious.
6.
He has always had an appetite for fast vehicles and one of his main motivations for succeeding in this business was to be able to afford his “automotive habit”.
7.
Says he loves the design process of building vehicles and road testing them, but his favorite part is actually getting to see the final vehicle up on the big screen.
8.
Encourages people interested in the auto industry to learn as much as they can—“you want to be one of the top guys that people come to as an expert.”
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Parents:
If all you want to do is work on cars all day, we are going to send you away to an automotive school.
How I responded:
My parents intended this to be a punishment not thinking that I actually would enjoy this work. Once I got into it, I realized that this work is really what I enjoyed and was my passion.