My name is Lucy Salter and I work as an Artist Manager in DNEG’s London office. I look after the artists who work in the Lighting, Environment Generalist and Build departments

I’ve been working in VFX since 2005 and spent the first 9 years as an artist, working in a range of technical roles including lighting, look development, pipeline and shader writing. I moved into Artist Management back in 2015 and it’s been quite a change!

My primary goal as an Artist Manager is to bring in and develop a really strong team at DNEG so we can produce the work of the highest standard possible. This goes hand in hand with helping my team with their career development which is hugely rewarding.

A typical day for me is hard to describe as there’s so much variety, in fact, that’s one of the things I really enjoy about this role - I never get bored!

It’s a very people-facing role so there’s usually lot of meetings and not much desk time and what I do each day depends on what’s happening in the business at the time. For example, when we’re hiring I'll spend more time on interviewing and selecting artists and when new shows come in my focus will be putting the right people into the right roles.

Scheduling people is always a large part of the job and it's vital to understand the needs of the projects and balance that with the artist’s career goals, give them a chance to develop their skills.

Another key area is performance management, including handling probationary and annual reviews. When running these I need to make sure I gather enough useful feedback to pass on to people and then take the time to sit down and discuss their time over the last year and their career goals for the year ahead.

There's lots more besides but all this but one final key aim of mine is to be available to my artists as and when they need to catch up with me, whether it’s with queries about contracts or career guidance through to personal support.