In large and midsize companies, job titles do not change as often. That’s because larger facilities tend to work on bigger projects and many more of them at one time compared to smaller studios. As a result, larger studios tend to have several producers, video editors, directors, graphic artists, and the like. But on the other hand, larger facilities may have more management positions that also require expertise in several areas.
In any case, studios need to provide training to help employees move between jobs as project workloads change. And knowing how titles change according to the size of the studio can help determine the training that may be needed.
Overall, the top three job titles in the industry are producer, video editor, and director. For larger studios, with more than 20 employees, the most common job titles are producer, graphic artist, and video editor. Overall, the average number of producers per studio/facility in the US is two. For studios with more than 20 employees, the average number of producers is four. Freelancers typically have a total of between three and four job titles apiece.
The accompanying chart provides a snapshot of the top job titles and the percentage of US studios/facilities that report having one or more of the titles shown in their operations.
-Jim Whittington, principal of market research firm TrendWatch, Inc. in Mill Valley, California. All data is from TrendWatch’s “Job Titles” Report.
For its visual effects work on
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, a four-hour miniseries for the SciFi Channel, digital production company
Animal Logic (Sydney, Australia) received an award in the TV series category at the Australian Effects & Animation Festival. The award-winning Animal Logic team includes 3D animators-who employed Discreet’s 3ds max and Alias’s Maya, as well as Inferno, Combustion, and Digital Fusion for 3D compositing-and 2D artists using Inferno, Flame, Combusion, Shake, and Henry.
Midway Games (Chicago), following its recent acquisitions of
Surreal Software (Seattle) and
Inevitable Entertainment (Austin), has acquired
Paradox Development (Moorpark, CA), which already is working on the next
Mortal Kombat game. Mobile games publisher
Sorrent (San Mateo, CA) has acquired European rival Macrospace (London), one of the largest players in the mobile games business.
Electronic Arts (EA; Redwood City, CA) has signed a five-year exclusivity deal with the
National Football League (NFL) and
Players Inc., a subsidiary of the
NFL Players Association. According to the agreement,
EA Sports retains the exclusive rights to all the NFL teams, stadiums, brands, and player names and likenesses for use in its football-based video games throughout the next five years. No other game publishers are permitted to include these NFL elements in games during this period; however, the agreement does not apply to Web-based and wireless games.
Adobe Systems (San Jose) has issued a call for entries for the 2005 Adobe Design Achievement Awards. Now in its fifth year and encompassing 10 countries and nine art categories, the competition is open to student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, and computer artists attending design, film, and broadcast institutions worldwide. Entries will be accepted from March 14 to April 29 and judged in May. Maker of facial synthesis and animation middleware technology,
Genemation (Manchester, England) has completed a seven-figure funding round, aiding the company in accelerating the development of embedded run-time technology for next-generation hardware platforms.