In partnership with Spring Studios, we ran our first collaborative ‘Access Spring’ event on Friday 7th June at their state-of-the-art  studio space in Kentish Town, London. In addition to supporting Spring's showcase of workshops on photography and moving image, the ACCESS: VFX team ran four exclusive 3-hour masterclasses throughout the day that included sessions on storytelling, character performance and career advice from industry talent specialists. 

In the morning The Third Floor’s Lead Visualisation Artist Jennifer Kitching, ran ‘Visualization for Storytelling’, an interactive workshop that gave an insight into what visualization is and how it relates to storytelling. With support from Mary Heskel, The Third Floor’s Head of Talent, rich discussions took place on how Previs allows filmmakers and content creators to explore every action and angle pre-shoot. Attendees had the opportunity to work on bringing to life a simple story idea.

In the afternoon Industrial, Light & Magic’s Senior Animator, Juan Guiraldes ran a second interactive session were delegates discovered how characters and creatures are brought to life through the art of character performance. 

Throughout the day The Mill’s Simon Devereux, led two back-to-back careers workshops providing sought after careers advice from the world of visual effects, animation and games. Attendees got to hear about the range of different roles, departments and disciplines that exist across the industry and received invaluable tips on how they can secure entry level roles, a mentorship and start building their career path. Both sessions were supported by Ollie Gilmour from Electric Theatre Collective, Harriet Edge-partington from DNEG and Adeola Sokunbi from Blue Zoo Animation.

Following the success of the event Sam Lewsi from Spring Studios said “all our attendees seemed to really love the day, and now thanks to your teams in particular, many will hopefully be on their way to their dream careers through your ACCESS: VFX mentor schemes. It was such a great pleasure to collaborate with you all and I really look forward to the next!”