Double Negative Visit

In march 2010 I went to London as part of a group to see some professionals in our field and we had a choice of studio's we could select from. I chose Double Negative Visual Effects company.

I've always had a strong interest in films and how CGI is used when compositing footage together. This was therefore an ideal trip. I first found out about the company when a past student from my degree course did "running" for the company last year. Since speaking to him about the work he has done and the kind of opportunities he has had made me look into them. Before we turned up I looked into to past pieces of work they had produced and past films they have worked on.

On their website it says they started with 30 staff and have grown to over 700 but this did not prepare me for the size of the company. We entered the building and spoke to Vic who is head of HR and she told us that it spread over 5 floors of that particular building. Being a past English teacher she was very good with people and really showed her enthusiasm for what she did. She showed us around the first floor of DN. This included everything from a reception area to 2D and 3D design rooms. Just seeing the workspace with everyone working together on projects I found fascinating. There was such a good atmosphere to the company even though it was it's huge scale. She explained the separate areas of their company before taking us into one of their screening rooms.

In the screening room we saw a showreel of pieces they have worked on and before we went back and watched it back trying to guess which bits had been done by DN. It was great to see what they had done and how some of it was so well hidden it was hard to figure out how they had done it.

After this she spoke to us about what we were up to on our course while we signed a form saying that we would not speak a word about the footage we were about to see. So I'm afraid thats about all I can tell you about the trip... They finished by showing us some examples of their compositing and how many layers and stages a shot goes through. It was fasinating to see and i think the trip convinced me the area in which i want to get into when i finish the course.

But saying that there are many companies out there and many more visits which i want to go on so this is not set in stone. I just really want to see what the inductry has to offer.