Finding an area to research

Ok, so I had a couple of meetings with Siobhan, the module leader, a few weeks back after I’d been digging through even more websites without much success. The meetings were quite helpful in that she helped me to flesh out a subject to research and present. I also got some names of people I might interview for the primary research. During the last meeting I showed her an article I found over at digitalcontentproducer.com and from that we started to make some slides for the presentation.

Basically, I’ll be taking a closer look at the past, present and future state of the visual effects industry. I’ll try to find some relevant facts and figures, look closer at how the development of new technologies has changed the industry, compare the industry in the UK and the US etc.

As mentioned in my last SPB blog post I’ve also found some information about the hierarchy in a typical visual effects facility in “the good book of Brinkmann“. In short it talks about how you might start out as a runner or technical assistant, move up to rotoscoping or paint artist, go from there to digital compositor, then compositing supervisor, digital supervisor and finally visual effects supervisor. As I wish to work in a visual effects facility this is quite interesting to me. I don’t quite know whether it will fit as part of the presentation though.

At this point, I feel a little more confident that I’ll actually have something to present come December 9th. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to scrounge enough information to keep talking for 7 minutes.