Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1591
42 January 2009 I t's been often stated in the pages of this magazine and elsewhere that the VFX, animation, and post industries are a "people busi- ness." That's why recruitment is so important—it's the recruit- er's job to secure the human talent that is so key to a company's ongoing success. So what happens when your hard-fought-for talent ups and leaves after making magic on a major motion picture? How do you fill that empty seat with equal or greater talent? How do you keep tabs on someone you'd like to bring back when more work is avail- able? And, how do you deal with an economic environment that portends less production, at lower budgets and tighter deadlines? You ask the recruitment experts. And we did just that. Four re- cruitment executives from top companies in the US, Canada, and the UK offer their take on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and "threats" they perceive that may help or hinder their efforts as they proceed into the new year. Dominic Davenport CEO/Founder Escape Studios London/New York www.escapestudios.com Escape Studios has multiple missions. The company, a reseller of post and visualization tools, also provides the industry with animation and VFX services. But, as founder Dominic Davenport says, "Our mainstay is to train and educate," and that includes job placement. Strengths: "One strength of recruitment in this industry is the diversity of talent. The majority of our business is repeat business based on clients finding our people incredibly useful and rebook- ing or asking for more experienced or specific roles to complete the task. Visualization customers want to adopt a more post or filmic pipeline, and they're using more high-end tools and delivering the type of images we see in movies and high-end animated features today, to sell a new city in the Middle East or in Singapore." Weaknesses: "For the recruitment industry, the main weak- nesses are going to be finding people, especially for postproduction, who have the specialist skills necessary to deliver high-end content at a time when budgets are being cut. I think there's going to be a crisis in salaries, at least at the high end. As the level of complexity expected by the public continues to rise, their eye becomes more re- fined, and you're just going to have to throw more people at projects to deliver the same level of quality in shorter amounts of time. With less money around, either a production moves to a locality where a workforce is cheaper or rates have to be cut. In the post industry over here [in the UK], I've heard rumblings of certain companies cutting rates across the board." Opportunities: "There is opportunity for talent to change fo- cus—like getting involved in projects using their skills for Web activ- People Persons Finding the best employees for the job By Ken McGOrry Escape Studios' Dominic Davenport: Talent may also look beyond the entertainment industry to CG-oriented visualization.