It’s a bit odd to me, how we all know about pixels, have internal training sessions, share knowledge, etc. But when it comes to leadership and managing people I feel like most people in VFX just go with whatever they feel works. Which leads to a super broad spectrum. I have met people, who were terrible at communicating and others who always made you feel appreciated, even when things went south. I always wanted to be the latter. No clue how to do it, tried to read a few books, asked people who I thought of as great managers and went from there. I’m just hoping I left a few good impressions here and there and people don’t just remember me for this guy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>I went to London for work twice. Nice city, but I’m a kid from the village, so having 10 Million people as my neighbors was always a bit bewildering. I would have done it again every time though. Both times I learned so much, but I always came back to the same place in Germany. In 2018 I came back once again after a year in London, started on a project and 3 months down the line we were told that the company is bankrupt. Not the restart I was hoping for, but not too much any of us could do about it. Thinking back, it was an interesing time. All things considered, I think the company managed it quite well. Eventually we were bought by another VFX company and mostly things went on as usual. A bit later we had our first round of layoffs. It came out of nowhere and caused quite an upset. I was very close to leaving at the time as well, but management ended up changing for the better, so I’m glad I stayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At about the same time, we became a lot more structured. Knowledge was often lost between projects and that needed to change, so the decision was made to put Head of Departments into place. Which was great, because I wanted to be on projects and we were extremely lucky to have a very senior Lighting\/LookDev guy who was perfect for this role. Unfortunately though, it didn’t work out, he left and I was asked the same question. Me? Really? Felt a bit like 2 years earlier when I was asked if I’d want to lead a show. After a few rounds of negotiations I accepted, mostly because I was encouraged along the lines of “If either of us sees that it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to show work only”. Alrighty then. I tried to keep an overview, put the right people into place, put out fires here and there and surprisingly it all went better than expected. Not because I was great at it or whatever, but more because I feel like I developed a good feeling for what task to give to which person, which Lead to pair with which show Supes, etc. There were many projects which were terrible, sometimes for reasons which were not predictable, but in the end we always tried to make the best out of it. Fun dances on wrap parties, going on hikes with people from the office, playing pranks on coworkers who forgot to lock their screens, giving a sick team member a ride to the hospital at 01 AM at the beginning of the pandemic, … How would you not feel nostalgic looking back at all this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end I had to always adapt to changes, implement new workflows and eventually switch to the parent company’s pipeline. Reluctantly at first, mostly positive in the end. I was very lucky that once again here I was blessed with coworkers that were absolutely amazing to work with. I think together we ended up having some of the strongest workflows in the industry. I’m still really proud to have had shows with 1-4 people, each dealing with over 100 high complexity shots without issues. Asset QC and Approval processes with nice presentations that clients loved. The list goes on. It was really rewarding. If you work in Lighting\/LookDev and you haven’t checked out Gaffer yet, you are missing out :)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will probably sound like my grandparents when I say something like “things are always changing”, but here we are. Sometimes things happen out of nowhere, which are out of your control. Then you go through the phases, where you are sad and angry, probably for the right reasons. If you give it some time and think it’s better to change something, then it’s probably a good idea to do so. At least that’s what felt right for me at the time. But there’s no need to look at what went wrong. I have so many good memories. If I worked with you there and you’re reading this: Thank you :) It’s been a fun ride!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So where was I going with this? Maybe it was just an excuse to type something for a longer time on my mechanical keyboard (there’s your hint if you’re looking for another hobby to waste your money on!). Anyway, the next post will probably be again about some nerdy stuff. But because I love drowning myself in nostalgia, here’s a little memoriam with some good memories :)<\/p>\n\n\n