Monday, September 06, 2010

Unions and freelancing issues

How Companies Turn People Against Unions 
(org link from the Animation Guild Blog)  



Ugh: the 'free' in freelance

More than 40% of contract workers report trouble getting paid. Average owed: $12K

(link from Tweet by ShannonGans)


2 comments:

  1. Hi Scott, really enjoy reading you blog. Could really use your help, didnt see your email up anywhere so using this comment box to get through to you.
    Im an Editor from India, worked on movies, documentaries using Avid Mediacomposer, Adobe Premier Pro Cs4, and Final Cut Pro for a few. I have worked in a couple of studios aswell. I have just dipped my feet into Visual effects, been using Adobe after effects.
    There are a lot more softwares I need to learn and I want to learn it on a professional level. Could you please recommend me the best place where I can learn this as a Degree course. There are many in India but havent found a good one as yet. Very mediocre institutes using out-dated comps/ softwares. And if they are good, the faculty isn't up to the mark.
    If its not too much of a trouble for you, could suggest me a couple of institutes that you recommend for learning visual effects/animation/rotoscopy/etc.

    Could really use your advice on this, thanking you in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Degree course - I don't know of any vfx company that requires a degree in vfx or a specific software package. I suppose some type of 'degree' shows you've taken a class but the thing that will get you hired is your reel, list of credits and your list of software you know and the level you know it. (be honest on your resume)

    Things may be different India, I don't know.

    If you want to get a university/college degree then best to check out the colleges near you or well know ones. However very few colleges offer real vfx classes.

    You can learn quite a bit of the basics of any software with books, DVDs or online. (Especially since it sounds like you're already knowledgable of other software). Many of the vendors of software have learning additions and tutorials. Foundary has tutorials for Nuke composting software and there are plenty of forums. As with most software read the manual first.

    Check out the School Post if you haven't already.

    http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2007/06/visual-effects-schools.html

    Lynda.com has classes on Maya, Nuke and others. Steve Write does the Nuke tutorial. Relatively cheap.

    fxphd.com and escapestudios.co.uk are some of the ones that offer more in-depth online tutorials. Please see the school links for the others. In India some posted gd institute.

    The only classes I've actually seen have seen the ones at Lynda.com so I can't provide any pros/cons.

    The downside to all/most of the online classes is they are English only.

    Obviously the online classes require a reasonable computer and internet access.

    The advantages of an actual course is it's likely to be in your language, hopefully the teacher will offer critiques and have you do various exercises.

    if you do need to take a clas I would recommend trying to find websites/forums that cover those schools to see what other opinions are. You can contact many companies and see if they have recommended schools. (i.e. these would be high on their list of likely candidates)

    ReplyDelete

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