PPP2-Creative Report

Throughout the year I have been engaging with numerous practitioners over email. Most notably Greg Maguire who I met at the networking event over the summer and exchanged contact information with. Greg specialises in Visual Effects Supervision and has worked for Industrial Light and Magic on films such as James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ and Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. While I do see myself as focusing more on smaller scale 2D children’s animation with my own career, I was still interested in gaining a perspective on the more CG oriented side of the industry and speaking to an industry professional who had worked on some major Hollywood Blockbusters.

Around early January I emailed Greg about conducting an interview over Skype for PPP, though even after a few weeks I received no response. Fearing my email may have ended up in his spam folder I texted his mobile number which I had received from my Uncle who had worked with him in the past, but still didn’t get a response. I’d put this down to him being busy and a lack of professionality on my part, as in hindsight I should have made it clearer in the email what exactly I was going to be asking him about.

I did however get in touch with a producer/director, Sian Nic an Bheatha at BBC Gaelige through my contacts at Paper Owl films, who after exchanging emails, agreed to conduct a short 20-30 minute interview. Sian was currently working on ‘#Faduda’ (the phonetic Gaelige term for ‘About’) an Irish Language online service at the BBC in Northern Ireland specialised in ‘shareable’ Gaelige programming for the underrepresented 18-30 demographic and had worked with animators in the past. According to Sian, there is currently an issue of representation of the 18-30 demographic across the entirety of the BBC (evidenced by the recent downsizing of BBC Three) and as such, certain elements of their original pitch for #Faduda had to be scrapped. For example; initially they had wanted a more episodes and their own website, however cuts within the BBC and regulations regarding branding mean they are still negotiating those terms.

We discussed routes into animation; how young animators who are just graduating can get into the industry to work for studios like Paper Owl and what producers like her are looking for in recent graduates. Her main advice was to keep myself open to lots of different things, as small studios such as Paper Owl Films and Sixteen-South in particular are very interdisciplinary, made up mostly of freelancers moving from project to project. In regards to employability, Sian stressed the importance of making a good impression, making yourself open and most importantly making yourself available for interviews and placements; a certain level of flexibility is expected of you when you’re starting out; encouraging me to go to more networking events as well as organising my own. She gave me an example of a recent graduate from the University of Ulster who was now working at Paper Owl films; how she had applied by looking for vacancies on the northernirelandscreen website and catered her showreel to the job she was applying for, which impressed the directors. Sian told me not to worry too much about writing a CV, or get too bogged down with qualifications when applying for jobs at these places, but to focus on developing an impressive showreel catered to the job you are applying for and generally make a good impression with people; one of the benefits of being on good terms with other practitioners is they can recommend you to clients at times when they can’t take on a project themselves.