Project Description

My interview with DreamWorks Animation

Published: October 23, 2013

Today I had an interview with DreamWorks Animation, and I’ve never been more excited (or more nervous) for an interview in my entire life!

Some background

When I was 17, sometime in early 2008, I told my parents I wanted to work in computer animation. I told everyone I wanted to work in computer animation. In fall 2010, 2 years after declaring computer animation a dream job, I met Josh Cooley, a man who had actually made a career working in animation. Josh was (and probably still is) a Pixar story artist. When he came to Omaha to talk about creativity 3 years ago, I was sitting front row hanging on every word. Josh worked on Up, among other films, and was nice enough to draw Dug, the ever-loyal feline protagonist from Up, for me before he left Omaha. I’m looking at Josh’s drawing as I write this–it hangs proudly on my dorm room wall. That night made a big impression on me.

Until last night, Josh was the only person working in animation I had ever met in-person. I spent six years looking for someone in the Midwest with professional experience in feature animation to mentor me, and in that time, I had only met Josh. But he was just passing through. Nebraska doesn’t have much to offer someone looking to break into the film industry. One of the big reasons I decided to leave the Midwest for grad school was to give myself more opportunities to make contacts with people working in the industry I aspire to join. I’m at the Penn now because it has very close ties to major animation studios through alumni that have graduated from the same program I’m now working through.

The interview

Last night, Mark, former technical director (TD) and current head of production pipeline at DreamWorks, gave a tech talk on campus about what it means to be a TD at DreamWorks. This morning, I had an interview with Mark and two women from the DreamWorks college outreach team. It feels incredible to get such immediate validation that I made the right choice by coming to Penn. Penn seemed like the best place for me to make industry contacts, and less than one semester in, I found myself sitting at a table talking to a trio of DreamWorks employees about potential employment opportunities!

I interviewed for a full-time TD position. What’s a TD? At DreamWorks, a TD is someone who acts as a bridge between the art departments (modeling, surfacing, animation, etc.) and the more technical departments (R&D, rendering, production pipeline, etc.). A TD’s day-to-day tasks are generally technical in nature, and rely heavily on problem solving.

For example, a TD might be tasked with writing a program to manipulate the data output from a set of tools used by the modeling department to make it compatible with the tools used by the rigging department who are next in line to handle that data. Or, there may be unwanted artifacts in a rendered image, and it’s up to a TD to decide how to fix the current renders and how to best prevent similar artifacts from appearing in future renders.

The questions

One. At your previous jobs, describe some instances where you had to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical people.

Two. What was the last DreamWorks film you watched?

Three. In that film, what do you consider to be the most technically complex shot and why?

Four. How would you explain object-oriented programming to my grandma who knows nothing about programming?

Five. Why are manhole covers round?

Six. In what situations would you want to use a language like C++ (compiled) over a language like Python (interpreted)?

Seven. Have you ever used a database for data storage/retrieval?

Eight. What was your Eagle Scout project?

I’ll try to answer these and other questions in future posts. I have a lot to say about some of them.

Conclusion

Overall, I think my interview went well, but I don’t think it went great–I stumbled over question six and rambled a bit (a lot) on question four. Since DreamWorks was on campus looking for full-time employees, and I’m still a year away from graduation, I don’t think this interview will lead to a job. Regardless, it was an awesome experience, and the opportunity to make contacts at DreamWorks was invaluable and really, really, REALLY cool! I have some studying to do, but I can’t wait for my next DreamWorks interview!

Cheers.

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Image credit: S. Charles