We unpacked pretty much straight away and headed to find our first place we was visiting which was called Molinare which was a post production company which has worked on films like "Give it a year" and "Keith Lemon the film" on entering the building we waited in reception for a couple of minutes then a guy came out called Tom Rogers who is the sales executive for Molinare then we was led in a board room/meeting room to have a quick talk and a overview of what Molinare does etc.
Then after about 10 minutes we went for a tour around the facilities, first we went into a grading room/cinema room which is used to review and grade films and TV programs, it was a very impressive room with about 20 cinema style lounge chairs, a massive 21.9 ratio screen, up to 4k viewing etc. After this we went upstairs to an editing and cutting suite, where we had a chat with an editor there about a few show's and films he had worked on. Then we went to a sound suite where they do all the soundtracks, vocals etc for the films/TV Programs, we met a guy in there who had been working in there for years and is well known by directors and producers all over, we had a bit of a chat with him about the equipment used and software.
We then went back to the meeting room to view Molinare's show reels for films and TV shows and to ask any more questions.
That was the only visit we had today, so when we left we went for a look around london then headed back to the hotel to have food and went for a couple of drinks.
On Tuesday we headed to Rushes which is a post production company when we went into Rushes we was lead upstairs to a screening room where we was shown some of the companies show reels about the work they have done for the past couple of years and the people they have worked for. Also they talked about colour correction, storyboarding, programs and applications that they use, unfortunately we wasn't able to look around the facilities. we was able to ask about runners and any questions we had.
Later on that day we went to a company called Double Negative which is a visual effects company, on entering the building we met Alice who works as a recruiter there, we was led to a screening room/cinema room, they have worked on films like Iron Man, Harry Potter, Captain America and John Carter we was shown a couple of show reels and we talked about the structure of how they work through a production etc.
She also talked about the 2 sides of the table which are creative and technical
Creative / Technical
Concepts Effects
Environments Software
Modelling
We got to ask any questions but we didn't get to look around the facilities unfortunately.
On Wednesday we went to The Moving Picture Company which is also a visual effects company which has been around since the 1970's and is owned by Technicolor specialising in visual effects, They have offices and studio's in Vancouver, LA, Montreal, New York, Mexico, Amsterdam, Bangalore and London. The structure of how this company works is different because they work in departments so for example all artists will work together it doesn't matter about how high up or ability levels they are all part of a team and they work as such. We went to one of their screening rooms/cinema rooms where we met 3 people who work there who shown us a couple of show reels about the work they had done, Like prometheus and many more, we got to ask any questions but didn't get to have a look around.
After Lunch we went to Blink ink which is also a visual effects company (2D) but within the Blink Company there are lots of different departments like Blink (Film), BlinkArt (Photography), BlinkInk (2D films) and White Lodge (Fashion Film). There was only 9 of us visiting this company so we got to have a look around the facilities which was really good, its great to see the people in a real world situation doing work, after this we went to a room where we got to see how they made the John Lewis advert for Christmas 2013, which is really cool because when you watch the advert it looks animated but it isn't check out the making of video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKfFhUdXA5M.
