Haz reflects on his experience of education institutions which teach VFX courses and explains why some people interested in a career in the VFX industry may be better off not attending University
I’ve visited a lot of education institutions: colleges, universities - which teach Visual Effects courses where I’ve given guest lectures or “recruitment talks” to students about the Visual Effects industry. I’ve realised that more and more places are offering VFX courses to their students.
I’m not going to talk about specific establishments here but instead I’m going to talk about my general experiences.
Observations from my Visits
Many of the faculties I visited were not the well-established universities renowned for providing Visual Effects courses, and yet these less high profile facilities were often kitted out with the latest hardware, beautifully designed work areas, Red Epic Cameras, Green screen studios and even motion capture!
Often this was as a result of government funding, but I realised as I was shown round may of these places that most of these resources were not being used or were empty. Typically I would be told that they get used by the lecturers or occasionally by some of the high caliber students who take a particular interest in Visual Effects.
When I looked at some of the curriculums and course content of the places I visited, I was surprised to find that the level of knowledge wasn’t what I expected. There seemed to me to be a lack of industry-standard learning and my feeling was that students weren’t getting value for money with their course fees.
