WWFX Reviews

The supervisors don't supervise shots, they socialize with their friends who they give the better shots to. When they do supervise a shot, they either want it done as fast as possible regardless of how it looks, just so they can turn it in and get rid of it, or if you do finish early, they tell you to milk the shot for a few hours before turning it in. Management is almost non existent, just warm bodies in chairs. Pay is based on if they like you enough personally, not whether or not you have the skills. Absolutely no benefits, don't even ask about them. No real form of communication or professionalism, just hearsay and rumors through the grapevine, but when you do get directly talked to, it's never good.

Don't know where to start... the studio is a mess. The main problem is that most of the supervisors are just people who have been there for too long, just worried for their salaries and keeping a low profile. Their technical knowledge is totally stuck (with a couple of exceptions). They pass all responsability to leads, who can hardly handle the amount of work. Most of the supervisors left at 6, while their teams had to stay until 9, 10, midnight... The deadlines for the projects are simply nonsense, so you end up doing bad work yourself to be able to deliver. As their expectations are not too high, everything gets approved, and then gets pulled back by the client (obviously). Quite a nonsense policy. They don't do any training, so the experience you can acquire in the studio depends basically on the people around you. Compers, concept artists... are in many cases roto guys that are promoted, but they do not have any kind of training, they just get promoted because they need compers. So they start with a really, really, really low technical level, if any. About the pipeline... what pipeline? Total chaos. In a 150 employees company, the only guy who knows how to script something has so much work with the current show, that he can not do any pipeline development. So, if you need a tool, you'd better know how to script it yourself. And about the general organisation of the films... I wouldn't say it is unexistent, I would just say it is wrong. They try to organise, but as the supervisors are -usually- unable to organise anything or do a reasonable time schedule, they usually find out 1 month before delivery that they made a wrong estimation. It's finally the compers doing 14 hours per day who suffer the consequences, the production guys are scheduling 10 shots per comper per day.... About the leadership, what can I say... they are not the most polite people in the world. You will never hear things like 'great work' or 'thank you'. If you want teamwork, you will have to manage it yourself. Not receiving complaints means you are doing a good work. About getting promoted, it is not too hard. They don't care too much about their people, so normally the experienced artists leave the studio, and automatically the next in the line gets promoted. :P