Trust Rhythm & Hues to come up with wholesome healthy initiatives that are win-win for both, the studio itself and for the industry at large too.
R&H India has shared with Animation Xpress.com, that it has launched its apprenticeship program, which has been very successful in the US. The Apprentice program is essentially an intense and highly structured program designed to give industry freshers real production training and work experience in a 4-8 week period before they go out and search for jobs.
â€?Participants will be paid a basic stipend, they will be given the opportunity of gaining valuable production experience on actual feature films and the chance to work with a talented group of dedicated professionals in a collaborative, energetic environment. They will also be exposed to some of the highest level of quality & creative work available in the Industry” shared R&H India MD Prashant Buyyala.
On being asked the objectives of the initiative Prashant shared, “In talking to various artists in educational institutes, we kept hearing the same complaints that freshers were having a tough time getting a break or an opportunity to work at the major studios. The artists kept saying that the studios were looking primarily for experienced/production ready artists. However unless someone gave them the initial break, how could these freshers gain the pre-requisite experience?
â€?From the studio perspective, several studio executives expressed that there was a large gap between what the educational institutes were teaching and what the studios needed in terms of production savvy artists. Hiring freshers can be a difficult proposition especially while on tight deadlines, therefore, they tended to prefer hiring experienced professionals. Part of R&H India’s strategy with the apprentice program is to help groups of freshers/junior artists to gain this real production training and experience. A small subset of the apprentice program participants will get an opportunity to continue as staff employees of R&H India, but the rest will now be armed with the training and experience to better position themselves at other studios in the country” he added.
There will be separate apprenticeship programs offered in the disciplines of Animation, Lighting, Compositing and Technology related aspects of the production pipeline and will begin at various times throughout the year. Ideal participants will be a fresher and/or junior having less than one year of experience and demonstrating superior skills and potential.
“Each Apprentice Program will be highly selective and very small in size (roughly 10 candidates per program). They are usually between 4 – 8 weeks in duration with the first half consisting of structured training in a classroom environment, second half having hands on experience on a simulated feature film production using real production footage and shots from recent movies like The Chronicles of Narnia, Superman Returns, and Garfield 2. At the end of the apprentice program, participants will receive a certificate of completion of the program” shared R&H India director, Saraswathi Balgam.
The participant selection process will start with the candidates submitting their demo reels along with a detailed resume. The R&H Team will view the demo reels and short-listed potential participants will be put through a written test. Based on the result of the written test & their work on demo reels the candidates will be short listed for a skills test, which will be held at the R&H Mumbai facility. A personal interview will then be conducted and finally the candidates will be selected.
“We believe that these 4 – 8 weeks of interaction with our artists as well a constant feedback from some of our best supervisors back in R&H-USA, will surely leave the candidate enriched with lots of industry experience in a short span of time” shared Saraswathi. “We are very excited to start out this unique program in India and learn from this experience!”
The studio will be conducting its first of a series of Apprenticeship program starting from the 4th December 2006. The first programs will each cover the topics of Lighting, Animation, Compositing aspects of Feature Film Animation & Visual Effects work. The deadline for the applications for this first series of programs is November 10th 2006. The application form along with further details on the program can be found at the careers section of the R&H India website (http://www.rhythm.in).