11 Lessons I Learned Working at DreamWorks

i got hired at dreamworks a little over six years ago and i left about four years ago now i can't believe it's been that long but it has here we are and while i wasn't there for that long and that was my first ever like industry job i learned a lot i learned a ton about animation and about i mean a ton of normal things that i expected to learn but there's also a bunch of stuff that came with it a bunch of understanding about the animation industry itself how things work and i don't know just a bunch of stuff that i kind of want to pull back the curtain on today and share with you nothing that's like weird and shady nothing like that but just a lot of things i didn't really expect to find once i got there so 11 things that i learned at dreamworks i have a secret message at the end of this video stick around to find out what it is and in case you're new here hi i'm sir wade i'm an animator and we do a bunch of cool stuff on this channel so if you enjoyed this video if you want to see more like it don't forget to subscribe down below with that let's get into the video i'm going to start with the kind of animation industry focus things and then get a little bit more specific from there so as far as the animation industry goes as a student i remember thinking that it was this kind of impenetrable bubble this thing that you had to break through it just sounded so mysterious and hard to get into it's really vague vagueness requirements of you but i realize that there's really not that much to it it's an industry like any other every i don't know field has an industry surrounding it and you just have to get a job somewhere in that field to be in the industry it's really not that complicated i think the big thing is that everyone always thinks of this the industry as the three main studios it's disney dreamworks and pixar and sometimes if you are a little more expanded it's you know an ilm and there are many studios there are tons of opportunities and there are tons of jobs besides just the one that you think you want not that you don't want that one but i got in at training i was a trainer at dreamworks i didn't get into animation first try i didn't even get into an internship when i first applied internships i got hired into the trading department which i didn't know existed i have an entire video on other jobs in the industry you may not know about but the point is there are a lot of openings and there are a lot of opportunities to get your feet wet and to try things and at least to kind of get a feel for what you want to do and where you want to work because you might be surprised to find it's not the place you thought a lot of people get fixated on just movies or just games and there's commercials and there's freelance and there's all kinds of other opportunities all around and sometimes those other opportunities are stepping stones and other times they become the thing that you find you actually enjoy more so be open to those possibilities and don't get stuck on just that one door that doesn't seem to be opening for you which leads into number two that often working at a certain studio isn't the end-all-be-all dream job that you thought it was not that it's bad or that it's like not all you hoped it could be but i remember how everybody in my classes going to animation mentor together animation mentors the online animation school that i went to so hey if you go check it out tell them i sent you but i remember all my classmates all of our goals we were disney dreamworks and pixar those were like the big main ones a couple people said sony a couple people said blue sky which you know that's a thing or you know blizzard other big game studios that everyone's heard of things like that and the trick with that is if you set all of your goals and all of your dreams on one studio what happens if you get there that's it that's that's all you had planned i mean not that you need to have this whole plan but a lot of people really like me a perfect example i thought you know getting to a big studio that's when i'll know i've made it and i got hired at dreamworks when i was 21 which is not a normal thing i got there really really early but i realized once i got there it's a job and it's a good job but it's a job and i need to have more dreams and goals beyond just working at a specific place and that's why you'll see a lot of people in the industry swap studios they'll work at disney for a bit then they'll go work at pixar they'll work the dreamworks they'll work on it's not about where you work or necessarily even what project you work on but the people you work with and the different opportunities you have to grow and learn new things so don't get too hung up on the studios because often you'll find people who work at smaller as a stepping stone to go to big or they'll go work at big studios but then end up going to work at smaller studios because they want to wear multiple hats they want to try a bunch of different stuff be a little bit more generalist in their abilities or people will even start their own studio because they have a certain story they want to tell or they'll switch to a different industry altogether because they want a new challenge we're seeing more of that even with youtube and people kind of saying no studio i'll just make independent content and i mean it's very varied it's what i'm trying to say there are lots of different things you can do so be open to all possibilities number three something i never would have expected i remember having lunch with an animator who was leaving the studio he was gonna go work somewhere else because he was bored and i was mind blown by that what do you mean you're bored you're an animator at dreamworks like how like well i've been doing the same thing for a long time and it's fun i enjoy it i love the people i work with but it's kind of the same rhythm there's different shots and different shows and different challenges along the way but i want something new and fresh and that just kind of blew my mind because i didn't realize before that moment that animation is a job that people work when you're a student i feel like there's a lot of schools a lot of bad schools as well that give you this really toxic notion of like kind of the the hustle and grind culture that you you have to live and breathe this thing and you have to exist solely as an animator that's your identity that's all you can be but i saw a lot of people working at the studio who were animators but they had lives i mean everybody had a life outside of work whether they were being creative with other hobbies whether they weren't family time friends whatever i mean social lives i can't imagine what that's like but it kind of blew my mind that animators could get jaded they could get bored of their jobs and need a change because as a student it's that same thing it's on a pedestal you're like ah working in a studio i mean i don't want to harp on the same thing you go there and you're paid to be there until a certain time and then when you're done you're done you go home and you live your life and you have to have a life you can't just exist as this being that only thinks about animation that's a really weird toxic thing that i think a lot of us learned in school in some way or another especially if you go to a really i mean if you go to a college or university especially where you're paying lots of money going into debt and they are just telling you that is what it's going to be if you want to be in this industry you have to work until you bleed and then you die at your desk because that's what it's like no that is toxic and horrible and i have heard more and more stories recently of schools that are poisoning people's minds with this kind of crap i have videos on this by the way coming up i'm working on some stuff so make sure you're subscribed if you want to hear the t but putting that to the side for a minute animators get jaded animators get bored of their jobs they need to change we're all people and you need to be able to have a life you need to be able to have friends or hobbies and that can be hard when you're a student because yeah it's a craft it's an artistic thing that requires hours and hours to get good at and that's the journey we all have to take in our own ways at our own pace but there comes a point where you do have to build in some amount of balance because it's not healthy to just do that and only that which was kind of my next one i kind of blended those two together the first ones that animators get jaded that i learned and the second one was that artists aren't legendary beings of light floating down the halls they're people they're very like just normal nice people who have lives so you get the gist next one yeah speaking of schools most schools do not teach you enough to get you a job like you can't expect to attend a school and then finish that school and then get hired which is kind of how it's presented to us and a lot of and i'm mostly talking about colleges and universities and non-animation school specific things like if they have a degree or a program for animation but that's not their main thing i'm mostly talking about those things so online animation schools focused on animation where the mentors and the people involved are all part of the animation industry they get a pass that's what those schools are for the animation mentors the anim schools the animation collaboratives workshops that people put together like that's the stuff that's good that usually is geared towards helping you actually hit those those goals as long as you're putting in the work as well i'm mostly talking about the other stuff which again videos to come but i saw that a lot i spent a lot of time with the interns at dreamworks when i was there because they were all my age basically so we all hung out and that was a big thing i saw when people would show me their demo reels and say like oh i go to this really cool school i'm like wow like that's awesome i never would have gotten into that school like you have a real let me see oh not that it's not good but is this all they're teaching you how are you expected to get in with this you have to do a lot of self-teaching self-exploring and honestly that's why a lot of people will finish regular school programs and pay all this money and go into debt and then say well i'm gonna go take an animation mentor class when i'm done with this or i'm gonna go take another workshop when i'm done at this school because i didn't learn enough that's pretty consistent and the only people who don't have that happen usually are the ones who put in a lot of time on their own and do all the extra learning unless you go to some amazing school where the program's really good it's nine times out of ten not going to be enough but i want to make a point that that's not because the industry expects this from you and schools only teach you this and like you have to make up this difference it's like what you need to get in i mentioned earlier how there's tons of opportunities there are and the bar is getting higher every day because people are just getting better there's more information there's more accessible information there's youtube channels there's twitch streams like there are ways to learn all kinds of cool stuff that we never had before so everybody's just getting better and the bar is rising yes however to get into a lot of these entry level positions it not that it doesn't take a lot but it doesn't take a ton you can do it it's attainable it's just that schools are teaching like way below the bar which is why i think it's so good that there's so much information online now because i mean again we're gonna we're gonna save this for another time this is a topic for another day i have a lot to say moving on i remember hearing a lot when i was a student that the industry or studios are super competitive impossible to get a job without a connection and while there is a point that like yeah having connections can help it can't just land you a job connections only take you so far that's something i've heard a lot like wow you're so lucky yeah you know i see people talking to you like well you're so lucky you got that opportunity it's so good you knew someone i i could never get in i don't know anybody in the industry i don't i don't live in la that's bs you don't need that you do need to be a nice person there are certain prerequisites like not sucking that up you know people have to want to hire you and there's things like that i've talked about that in other videos but one of the big things that seems to be true for the animation industry at least in my experience and again this is you know grain of salt this is my experience there is competitiveness there is a competition because there are limited jobs especially at certain studios that you'd want to you know get the one or two openings at at a time but it seems that unlike a lot of industries the animation one is a very collaborative competition where you're not like fighting against other artists to get the job you are trying to help each other get something so that everybody can get something eventually if that makes any sense say you know of an open position and someone asks you hey do you know any open positions i'm trying i'm trying to get hired and you squirt it away and say nope i don't know about it and then you applied it yourself well say they do find out on their own they get hired they get the job and then they find out like wait a minute this person applied and they didn't tell me like that's kind of messed up you don't be that person you want to be the person who's always trying to help everybody else as well as grow yourself where you say yeah actually i know of this application you know i'm applying myself you should totally go for it as well because then if either one of you gets it you're more likely to want to help the other person both ways in the future because you're just nice to each other and that's the kind of stuff you want at your company i think it was a quote i had heard about luck at some point that luck is the bridge between opportunity and hard work if an opportunity comes up if you know that person if they're like hey man like i know this job you should totally apply for it if you don't have the work if you don't have the experience of your own that you've built up to prepare yourself for that opportunity it does nothing for you so you could know everybody in the industry but if you don't have a decent demo reel you're not going to get hired that's just plain and simple you're not getting a job and you can't necessarily control having all these connections you can network sure but the one thing you can control is your work ethic and making sure you actually have the stuff to back you up because a pixar called me tomorrow and asked if i want to work on light year i mean yes please i don't have the demo reel at the moment that i'd be proud to show them and say hey here's my work absolutely check out my stuff see if i'm worthy i'm just not ready i haven't put in the work to meet that opportunity or to happen but seriously pixar if you're interested let's talk i'm losing track of the number so i'm just going to keep going your peers are often the people to be networking with and not your mentors that's something i learned that not that your mentors aren't a good person to network with because they work at the studios that you want to get to and they know all the stuff and they work in the industry like yeah you know try to impress them sure but it's more often than not your classmates and the people around you that are more important to just be present with and hang out with and get to know and become friends with not for any kind of weird transactional reasons but because you're all in the same boat you can all learn and grow together which will help you just do so much better as an artist you'll have a support system you'll have feedback groups there's a lot of stuff that you can gain from each other being in that collaborative environment and then kind of as i mentioned earlier when there are job opportunities you are all in it together you all know each other's work you can get kind of used to that and then when one person gets hired and says hey do you know anybody we need you know five or six more animators you've got a couple people that you'd love to recommend and hopefully you are the type of person that they would want to recommend again you don't make friends with people so that you can get something from them later it's not usually your mentors that you're hanging out with over discord or i don't know playing video games with on the weekends it's the friends you make online in school wherever it is that you do the networking type of stuff which for some people you may not have a place for that yet which is why there's places like my discord there's schools and programs and workshops you can sign up for twitch channel i mean there's the internet's kind of your best bet if you don't currently have that group which i never did i just never had that group when i was going through school i knew some kids from animation mentor but i never like had a squad and i look back and realize that's something i wish i would have put a little bit more effort into doing just because i never had that friend group of animators to you know talk shop with so i made the youtube channel so that i could make one for everybody else who like me didn't at the time i outlined a lot of this video before work from home started so i wrote down at the time you do have to live there because kind of what you had to do you wouldn't be hired remote but that's not entirely true now is it i'm gonna just ignore that one we're gonna skip it and move to another one another thing i learned that seems to be a shock to other people when i tell it to them is that people at studios do waste time and they have fun at their jobs not every studio has the best culture not every studio has the same culture but most good studios at least have a nice culture where you can take a break and you can go on a walk and you can you know get some water go have a coffee meeting or something and just kind of chill for a little bit take a step away from the work away from the computer think process just kind of refocus your energy and then get back to it when you're feeling up to it you can have that balance at work of you know doing good hard work and even being overworked and you know maybe putting in too many hours and having a nice working experience there is a way to have that balance and many if not most studios at least that i've heard of have that like i was shocked when i was at dreamworks how many parties we had like there was always parties every week somewhere like i'd be walking through campus taking a walk because i would just take a walk and you know about 4 p.m and get a little sleepy so i'd go and grab some water and just take a stroll around the campus because it was really pretty and every single week i'd walk by some courtyard or something that had like cake or drinks or something going on and people were just hanging out celebrating something or i don't know whatever people were doing one party had just like a table of jello shots and i walked by and they're like oh sweet take a jello shot back to your desk and i was like sure that thing was strong i was glad it was almost the end of the day because geez but there was even a time that our department meetings we had department meetings i think maybe once a month and a different person was always in charge of that meeting like one time i was in charge and i had to come up with an activity it's kind of an agenda for what to discuss except for what other people had to talk about and uh a snack i got a watermelon and i figured out how to infuse it with vodka and we had a whole like spiked watermelon plate and fruit plate and stuff it was really nice and fun but yeah people know how to unwind and you can have a good time while you work hard we also had fail fridays uh someone in my apartment at the beginning of my my time there they would do fail fridays in the office where we would all go friday mornings fail fridays everyone come on and we go in there and we just watch like a fail compilation and just like laugh together as a department and just hang out it was i don't know it was nice i mean one summer a bunch of the interns in my department and i put together like a hand puppet show don't ask me why we did it but we did we shot it professionally we did like props and sets just kept getting more and more [Music] elaborate [Music] [Applause] [Music] crazy it got crazy maybe at some point i'll post that on the internet um i've been meaning to i just haven't gotten around to it anyways you can have a good time at work is what i'm trying to say and speaking of interns that was another thing when i was you know and in my department and helping kind of pick interns i was involved with the selection process and reviewing resumes for a while and things like that and man there are a lot of bad resumes out there i have a resume workshop i'm thinking about redoing it but the current state of it is linked below if you want to check it out you know tips on resumes and that kind of thing i spent a lot of time going through resume stacks this big and realizing that this many of them were just trashed not because they were bad and like oh my gosh my resume's gonna get thrown away no it was just they're just like random resumes that people would just apply to every job we'd have like i'm trying to be an accountant and i'm i've got 46 years of being an accountant like i think people are just hitting apply all on linkedin and just submitting their resume to every open position or something because there were a lot that just didn't belong there and then there were you know the rest of the resumes that maybe like half of them didn't you know people weren't spelling dreamworks wrong or something like all you have to do is you know have a little bit of attention to detail spell things right have some decent grammar and then not bulk your whole resume like that's something i've gotten really good at is being able to tell when somebody is actually being genuine and saying hey this is what i did and you can do the thing where you like you boost what you say in the right way where it's like you know this was your job but you say it like this to sound impressive because that's fair and that you know gets your stuff noticed and then in the interview you can explain like oh well this is what i did and they look at the two and they say yeah that fits that makes sense versus trying to say i don't know i was vice president of this no you weren't anyway that's a different topic but like the thing about resumes that i wanted to share is i learned how much easier it was than i would have ever expected to get an internship based on the general competency of resume building and i think it's also another thing with schools like a lot of schools give really bad advice like make sure you follow this template and do it like this like oh god please don't there's there's so much bad advice around resumes just quick tip don't put a bunch of soft skills excellent communicator highly effective organized team player like don't put that on your resume like show that through your cover letter show that in your interview through the stuff you put in your resume that should be able to be felt you don't need to tell us because that's not gonna really get you anywhere for skills you may as well just put your software like what skills do you have what things can you do and don't rank them with like three out of five what does that mean photoshop three out of five premiere four out of six maya five stars what what what does it mean if you have two stars does that mean like you don't know how to use certain like there's no scale just just write down the software that you're confident with and don't put microsoft excel if you've never actually used microsoft excel at least watch some tutorials so that if you get in an interview and says tell us what you know about excel oh it's part of the microsoft office suite no we need you to use excel actually be able to back up your resume anyways and it was bringing this full circle to the next thing that i learned recruiters actually want you to get the job that's just something that i don't know i never really thought about it i had this idea that recruiters were kind of like i don't know goalies trying to block as many as like weird things as possible and let in only the best things and while that's kind of true as far as just like letting in like the best fit for the job recruiters are not goalies trying to block stuff from getting in they're sort of like i mean they're more like the seeker in harry potter trying to find the golden snitch and bring them in they're actively searching and seeking out talent trying to find great people to bring to the studio invite them say no we want you get in here recruiters are great everybody i've ever met who has worked in a recruiting department has been just a gem of a human being i love everybody i've ever met in recruiting at every studio that i've met anybody from recruiters are great they genuinely want to help you want you to get the job and if they had more time would probably love to give feedback to everybody now i can't speak for everybody and i'm not going to sign them up for more work so like don't go reaching out to recruiters all over linkedin and bugging them that's not going to help just so you know when you are applying places and you're getting maybe you get a message from a recruiter or maybe maybe you don't because they're busy and there's that thing of like oh like if we don't you know take your application this time we'll keep it on file and for next time that always sounds very like oh yeah they'll keep my file they actually do a lot of studios actually do keep really good records of the applicants and so when you apply a second time six months a year later and you have a new demo reel it does actually connect with a file they have of you and in that situation they'll look at the new demo rail and go oh wow look how much growth there's only two shots that they kept from the old one to the new one everything else on here is brand new in these six months they've done like three other shots they're working hard this is awesome look at the growth and recruiters will actively kind of pay attention to that and they're amazingly good in my experience of remembering people and just remember like oh yeah i met you at this event back when we had events and you had the shot with this thing right i don't know they retain information like nobody's business it's crazy but it is true that you should apply when you have new stuff every now and then even if you're like i'm not ready i don't know if i'm like just apply the worst that somebody can say is no and the best thing that can happen is even if you don't get the job you've got that in the file when it really feels like you've made progress apply again because they will see the growth and that can help you get the job sometimes the right timing with the right opportunity you could get lucky so just keep that in mind that recruiters are there to help they are there because they want to let people into the studios and help you get the job also in case you haven't heard me say it a billion other times they want to hire nice people so don't be a jerk and if you know someone who's a jerk they're probably not going to get hired because nobody wants them working at their studio even if they're amazingly good but they're they're just a total oh nope and if that jerk in your class does get hired somewhere well you know where not to apply and now what it's alright i got rid of him i got your back don't worry about it you don't need to know where he went it's not important right now what is important is the msi creator awards the msi creator rewards what's that you say well i'll tell you i'm so glad you asked the msa creator awards something that that guy's judging it is something that you should absolutely participate in because you can win awesome prizes but how do i participate you might ask well it's easy all you have to do is make something in 3d it could be an animation could be a model could be 3d concept art really doesn't matter you can use any software you want and the only real rule is it has to fall under their theme tech meets aesthetic and include their logo somewhere the rules are actually super easy there's a ton of great prizes and you have until the end of may to submit something you can win a desktop computer an rtx 3080 a laptop the prizes are great check the link below if you want to learn more so make sure you participate because who doesn't want to win great prizes nope that's right god these people i don't know how they get in here i think they live in the attic anyways hope you enjoyed this video if you enjoyed these tips make sure to hit this button it helps a ton and subscribe if you haven't already and yeah like he said msi creator awards you no no yeah participate anyways thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 22,349

Keywords: dreamworks job, animation industry, animation jobs, get hired, animation reel, demo reel, animation showreel, dreamworks mistake, dreamworks lesson, dreamworks, pixar, animation studio, animation studio jobs, working in animation, work at dreamworks, work at disney, work at pixar, studio internship, pixar internship, animator, animation, character animator, best animation jobs, animation assistant, intern jobs in animation, internships in animation, 3d, 2d, dreamworks animation

Id: Lb-pMheduZA

Length: 24min 40sec (1480 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021