Sony Pictures Imageworks has developed an innovative program to educate teachers on the real demands of working CG artists. All images © Sony Pictures Imageworks.

For students seeking studio internships, programs abound that offer glimpses of what to expect in the world of work. But over the past year, Sony Pictures Imageworks has been developing a program designed to reach these future employees through a different conduit — their teachers. According to Mae Turner Moody, Imageworks’ vp of digital production and administration, “Many of us who’ve worked in this industry for a while have been thinking about what we can do to help schools produce the kinds of students that we’re looking for. We’ve never seen any program that specifically involves faculty. So we came up with the idea of ‘embedding’ teachers in our facility for a four-week fellowship. During that time they would go through our training program and be assigned to ‘shadow’ a staff person working on a particular production. They would experience the ups and downs and pressures of a show.”

“The idea is that they would experience the same training that any employee would go through, so they’ll understand what’s expected of new hires,” adds Sande Scoredos, Imageworks’ executive director of training and development. “They’ll take that experience back to the classroom and pass it on to their students.”

The first presentation of this idea — now called Imageworks Professional Academic Excellence Program (IPAX) — was made at a SIGGRAPH 2004 reception. Moody, who spearheads the program with Scoredos, recalls, “We invited about 25 to 30 schools from across the United States to talk to us about what they would think if we were to do something like this. Out of that invitation list, I think we had about 20 schools that talked to us. We got really good feedback.”

An Imageworks task force then set about assembling criteria for the program. Moody explains, “We invited the schools to submit not only their letter of intent, telling us how they thought we could work together, but also information about their curriculum and their faculty. We had 18 schools submit material, and we took quite some time evaluating each one. Knowing that our plate would be rather full in the facility, we didn’t want to overburden ourselves by taking all 18 schools. So we decided upon six.”

For the first year of IPAX, those schools are DePaul University in Chicago, Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, Pratt Institute School of Art and Design in New York City and three Los Angeles-based institutions: The University of Southern California, Otis College of Art and Design and Gnomon School of Visual Effects.

In spring 2005, the first two IPAX faculty fellows completed the program. Otis department chair Harry Mott “shadowed” Imageworks’ Frederick Lissau, who’s an associate production manager on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Meanwhile, USC professor Richard Weinberg was assigned to “shadow” Seth Maury, digital effects supervisor on Monster House.