A VFX job brought him to New Zealand. Now he’s staying.

Getting here took a slightly less direct route.

Before visual effects, there was bartending, events, weddings, the club scene and around five years working as a journalist. Then, at 25, Alessandro decided video was where he wanted to be. That led him into compositing, then into lead and supervisory roles, with work taking him from Italy to the UK, Canada and Germany.

By the early 2020s Alessandro was back in Italy, working remotely, with his own place, three cats and pretty sure he was staying put.

Then a recruiter he knew from his London days got in touch. There was a VFX job in New Zealand, with Cause and FX in Auckland.

“I’d always said that in ten years, I wanted to be in New Zealand,” says Alessandro. “For me, it was the apex I could reach.”

So, he packed up again.

Giving New Zealand a year

Alessandro arrived in Auckland in September 2025 with a fairly sensible deal made with himself: give it a year.

“I came here with the idea of staying a year,” he says. “Then I liked it.”

The logistics, he explained, were less dramatic than you might expect. Cause and FX worked with him through the immigration process, while the team helped make the practical side of arriving in a new country considerably less daunting.

“The flight is 26 hours. That’s the most difficult thing,” Alessandro laughs. “The rest was fine.”

For Sneha Bhula, Cause and FX’s People & Culture Manager, the formal process is only one part of bringing someone across the world. Cause and FX is an accredited New Zealand employer and works with immigration adviser Tim Howard at Pathways NZ to help navigate the visa process. International recruitment partner Mota also helps the studio identify experienced people overseas when the right skills aren’t readily available locally.

“We appreciate how big a move it is to upend your life and come here,” she says. “Alessandro had my number and we were WhatsApping throughout the journey. He’s in Italy, I’m here in New Zealand, and we’re just talking and making sure everything is as seamless as possible.”

That support continues after the plane lands. Depending on what someone needs, it can mean help with short-term accommodation, information about banking and public transport, where to buy furniture, how schools work for people arriving with families, or simply having someone available to answer the questions you don’t realise you have until you’re suddenly living in another country.

In Alessandro’s case, one of those discoveries came when he assumed he could live in central Auckland and bike to the Cause and FX studio on the North Shore.

There was, after all, a bridge. Unfortunately, not one he could cycle across.

Finding the right VFX talent, wherever they are

Local talent remains fundamental to the studio, and growing New Zealand artists through the industry is something the team wants to do more of. But VFX is also a global industry, and some of the experience a studio needs simply isn’t always available in the right place at the right time.

“When we’re hiring, the technical skill is obviously important. You need to know your craft,” says Sneha. “But beyond that, it’s the mindset and attitude. We’re not just asking whether someone will fit our culture. What are they going to bring to it? Can they grow? Can they make others better?”

That mattered with Alessandro.

He arrived with more than a decade of industry experience, but also with a strong instinct for teaching and developing other artists. Alongside his studio career, he has worked with students overseas, running workshops and helping emerging artists understand everything from the technical craft to how they present themselves and build relationships within the industry.

That experience fits neatly with what his role at Cause and FX actually involves.

“A lot of being a lead is nurturing artists,” Alessandro explains. “It’s assisting them, training them and creating a safe environment for growth. There’s creative direction and organising the work as well, but a big part of it is helping people develop.”

For Sneha, that makes an international hire like Alessandro valuable beyond the shots sitting directly in front of him.

“Someone like Alessandro brings experience from different studios, different ways of working and different people he’s taught,” she says. “Then he can bring that knowledge into our team and help develop more junior artists here. That’s a big focus for us. Bringing people through and growing them.”

It’s also part of why Cause and FX deliberately looks for different perspectives when it builds a team. Different countries. Different studios. Different shows. Different leaders. Different ways of solving the same problem.

“That diversity of thought is really important,” says Sneha. “You bring two different cultures or ways of working together and create something that wasn’t there before. We want people who can bring different and better ways of doing things.”

What working in VFX in New Zealand looks like

Almost a year in, Alessandro has had time to get a feel for what working at Cause and FX is like. Some of the projects he’s been working on are still under wraps, but the work has ranged across very different genres and visual effects challenges. What has stood out to him as much as the work itself is the way the studio approaches it.

“There’s a lot of discussion,” he says. “We talk about things and try to disassemble the big problems into smaller ones. That’s really helpful for the creative process.”

That collaborative approach has been a contrast to some of his previous experiences, which he colourfully described as feeling like “playing the floor is lava on a unicycle”.

This has been different.

“The work-life balance is much, much better,” he says. “I’ve worked in places where nine in the morning until ten at night was normal. Here, that’s not the thing.”

That doesn’t mean the expectations around the work are lower. Sneha sees the standard of craft as something that applies across the whole studio, regardless of job title.

“The way we do anything is the way we do everything,” she says. “Whether you’re an artist, working in finance, HR or anywhere else, it’s about doing what you do with care and excellence.”

It’s also about what happens when work isn’t the only thing going on.

So, was New Zealand worth the trip?

Very much so.

Auckland has taken some adjusting to, particularly for an Italian who would prefer to get around on two wheels rather than four. But the trade-off is having an enormous amount of green space and coastline sitting remarkably close to the city.

“That’s one of the things I love,” Alessandro says. “You can go from the concrete jungle to literally a jungle. I live near the Domain, and you just step into it and there’s all this nature.”

He’ll happily recommend the move to other artists considering New Zealand too.

His advice?

“Just come. Take the leap of faith.”

Alessandro arrived expecting to give New Zealand twelve months. In that time, he’s found his place in the Cause and FX team, brought another layer of international experience into the studio and built a life here that he doesn’t seem particularly interested in packing up again.

Sneha sees his story as a useful reminder for anyone sitting overseas looking at New Zealand and wondering whether moving this far is simply too big a leap.

“It is far away,” she says. “But Alessandro is a great example of someone who has come here and really made it work. Within a year, he’s made a life for himself and become part of the team. If the right opportunity comes along, I’d say pursue it.”

Ask Alessandro what comes next and his answer is about where Cause and FX goes from here.

“Ad astra,” he says.

To the stars.

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