Earlier today I attended a lecture with Andrew Schlussel, a recruiter from Framestore. His Linkedin also lists him as a director as well as a professor at Academy of Art, which is interesting, because I turned down an offer from Academy of Art in order to come here, favoring UAL for its connections, opportunities, name recognition, and more competitive acceptance rate. That said, I am very grateful for the opportunity we had to speak with Andrew today. Getting the chance to speak with a recruiter from Framestore face-to-face (as it were), was an incredible opportunity and really taught me a lot about the way the hiring process and growth within the industry works as well as nudged me to pursue a new path for my showreel in accordance with the demand in the industry.
The question that I posed to Andrew was regarding the number of entry level roles that Framestore looks to hire as they go through the hiring process each year (season?) and what that number is dependent on.
Andrew answered me that the role that could be considered the most “entry level” aside from a runner position would be as a matchmove artist or as a 2D paint artist, and that they are looking to hire for these positions year round, but of course it depends on the number of roles that are available for each project. We discussed the field of matchmove and he informed me that a skill highly in demand right now is something called “matchimation”, which involves animating a character rig over footage of an actor. I believe this is the same sort of thing we had been working on with Dom in January with the superhero suit. Andrew then also talked to me about the career path for a matchmove artist- it is typically considered entry level but there is growth within the industry.
I plan to incorporate matchimation in my showreel by re-centering my individual project for this term around it. I will go back to acquiring footage with this goal in mind.
One last piece of information mentioned by Schlussel that stood out to me was that, obviously, a junior position after school is ideal, but an internship may have a 70% chance of landing an applicant a role upon completion, and then a runner position can still open many doors. As someone who’s worked in customer service for over five years while finishing my education, I’m not afraid to wash dishes if it gets my foot in the door.
I also liked his discussion of a “playful” approach to learning software. He told us that we should try out software like Unreal Engine, but focus on exploring its tools and learning what it has to offer rather than forcing ourselves to visualize an end goal.