Today we were fortunate enough to have a lecture from Andrew Schlussel who is a recruiter from Framestore to talk through what the different areas we could go into.
Films we would know they did in their studio were:
- Gravity
- His Dark Materials (won a BAFTA)
- Bladerunner
- Midnight Sky
- Winnie the Pooh
- Paddington (highest rated film)
They have offices in places like Montreal, Mumbai and London.
Different departments:
- Creature FX: hair simulations, skin, clothing. Using Zbrush. Simulation on top of simulation. Detail on the clothing.
- Effects Department: materials, Houdini programme.
- Lighting & Composition: rendering , sometimes its cost effective to work out what the light would be before renting the space.
- Immersive department: data visualisation. VR mars field trip
- Pre-production service: Pre-vis, make creative decisions, topology
- Intergrating Advertising: episodes/adverts. Steward Meruda – palaeontologist
- department based, 50 – 80 people
- Junior, Mid, Lead, Senior (works independently)
- Showreel – only show your best work
- Where do you look to hire? He answered that on Linkedin.
- What programmes are up and coming to know – unreal engine
- USD – new file format that can be read and written by all programmes.
- careers.framestore.com
- Storytelling is important
- The visual Story by Bruce Block
- Learn unreal – free to download, real time render.
- Aim to be really good in one area.
My thoughts:
To be honest, I was a little shocked by how blunt he was to me. I didn’t think to much of it until when I spoke to someone else on the course and they thought he was a little abrupt with me. I asked numerous questions because no one else seemed to really ask.
One of those questions was: What areas would be good to learn to get a foot in the door in the industy? e.g. animal animation.
His response was that it was a red flag to ask that and you should be specialing in what you are good at and not what gets a job…
I thought this was a little weird as this is basically why we all did a masters to learn the skills that are needed to get the jobs over other people. The job market isn’t amazing at the moment so iof I had to start a job in an area I wasn’t completely passionate about then progress after time to the role I want… that seems like making ends meet. We need a job at the end of the day and I don’t want to be picky.
I did still add him on LinkedIn but I don’t think he liked me very much. Either way I did learn some stuff but I don’t think that is that kind of place I would want to work.
Question for Medhi:
- How to close shape I?