Getting a career in professional digital animation on film or television productions can be more difficult than it may immediately appear. There is a remarkable number of competition for these jobs, after all, and so the skills you know are of utmost importance, but it can also be a wonderful advantage to have connections within the film industry. Learning to become a digital animator is not something you can typically do at a film school, which more often focuses on directing, editing, and other basic attributes of filmmaking. The odds are you will learn more about the things you truly need to know as far as digital animation is concerned if you study at an art school or attenda similar program.

Essentially, it is in art schools where a lot of digital animators go to learn what they can and harness skills and abilities required to work in the film industry. There is a huge deal of competition coming from these types of schools, however, and so other types of programs can often be more attractive for potential students looking to find any advantage they can. These programs can include internships with digital animation studios, extending connections within the industry and exposure to real world work practices, or other types of educational systems besides traditional classroom learning. The mentor-apprentice method for learning is one program being offered with these alternative courses. A professional who works in the industry will function as a mentor and is partnered with a student according to this method. The mentor then shares his or her experiences and knowledge with the apprentice, who not only learns about how the industry functions, but also learns the skills he or she will need to work as a professional.

If you have got a solid artistic background together with the interest to work as an artist, it is possible that you are already interested in becoming a digital animator. While there are plenty of artistic skills and methods that can be taught to you, there are certain fundamental aspects of artistry that you need to already have. You should find a school or program that will team you up with a mentor in your town who works in the industry and can educate you what you would need to learn to turn into a professional digital animator. Working with a mentor can also help you make contacts with other people working within the industry; these contacts might be able to assist you in entering the field of digital animation by helping you find employment opportunities.

Question! What’s the last film you saw? In all likelihood it wasn’t a film – mainly directors are shooting digital video now. Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg are renowned filmmakers who still opt to shoot on film. Bay says: “I’m old school because I like to shoot on film.” Thoughs they are the exception as digital video cameras today are impressive enough you can’t see the difference between film vs video.

It was George Lucas who originally utilized a Panavision-modified Sony HDW-900 camera to shoot his second “Star Wars” prequel. Now most other huge filmmakers are following suit. Sony’s CineAlta F23 and HDC-F950 cameras were brought into play by Michael Mann when he shot “Public Enemies”. The movie “2012” was shot with the use of Panavision’s Genesis high-definition camera by Roland Emmerich with which he told DGA Quarterly: “I don’t think I will ever go back.” But you will must pay much. The Genesis isn’t for sale; it is for lease at a rate of $3,500 a day to $45,000 weekly. Nevertheless, Emmerich goes for it: “Compositing is so much better in digital – there’s much more information to work with.”

Director Adam Shankman was nervious about moving to digital when he attempted it on “Bedtime Stories”: “I was worried about the depth of field, and for the first two weeks, I really had my eye on it because I was concerned after I saw the testing of daytime exteriors.” But he states it all resulted being fine.

The Red One is another cost-effective but similarly popular digital camera. Most film lenses are compatible with this camera, hence, you can make use of the older lenses you have been using in the past. David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh have used it on their recent films. For the television series, “Leverage”, Producer Dean Devlin is making use of this camera: “For me, those easy-to-change hard drives are a big deal when it comes to choose film vs video. They store a whole lot of content, and we can simply take them and directly put them into our system and get right to work. That transcends everything – skipping the transfer of dailies is a game-changer.”

Not all cameramen are convinced. Michael Hofstein, a cinematographer, has written: “Film images have a depth that hardly any other medium can match at this time… Isolating an image with a long telephoto lens is sort of tricky and relatively non-existent when utilizing a digital camera due to physics of the current professional 2/3-inch digital chip versus a 35mm film frame. 35mm film encompasses a larger latitude.”

But Emmerich, Fincher and Devlin all think the technology has advanced enough now that digital is the approach to take.However, Emmerich, Fincher and Devlin are in agreement that technology has advanced adequately to go with digital. And there are actually some things that appear better in digital. A product manager for the Phantom HD line by the name of Moe Shore states, “A simple, mundane thing like pouring water into a glass takes on an extraordinary beauty if you slow it down to 1,000 frames a second. To do this with film would require a huge camera and value.” So it looks like it’s bye-bye film stock and hello hard drives for film vs videomovie-making in the new era.