This was just one of the events on the trip though!

In all students from all 3 years of the course visited the 4 largest Visual Effects agencies in Europe from Cinesite (whose offices you can see us photographed outside) to Double Negative, MPC and then Framestore. In this, our annual trip to the agencies, students were taken on tours and shown examples of work which will hopefully inspire their work in later projects!

Double Negative have since won both the Visual Effects BAFTA and Oscar for the film Inception. Malcolm Watts was working on Body Tracking for the main actors, to help create digital doubles that perfectly lined up with the movements of the actors in the shot. A number of the shots that he worked on were also setup for Stereoscopic Projection. He also helped Body Track a couple of shots where the actors were on the Dragon Rig to line up shadows to cast correctly on to the Computer Generated Dragon.

Liam helped with the compositing and rotoscoping for the Battle of Hogwarts and Dragon sequences.

Liam Major said of the Special Effects Development course at University of Bolton:

“Bolton University’s SFX course guided me creatively, practically and professionally to ensure I had the skills and understanding required to break into the industry. The knowledge I gained was relevant and essential. Through this, I achieved what was previously a dream.”

Next up: Ashley Blyth, who is currently working on the next Pixar movie, their first live action feature – John Carter of Mars.

The Academy Award-winning visual effects company was responsible for the mind-bending special effects in last year’s stand-out blockbuster film, Inception. The company, which has also won a BAFTA for the groundbreaking work in this film, came to Bolton to speak about the industry to the University’s special effects students.

This was part of an exceptional day’s events for the students who were also treated to a lecture by Adrian Woolard, the BBC’s Project Lead at its Research and Development North Lab.  The day ended with the students showing off their own work to the industry professionals.

Speaking at the student showcase, Jon, a third-year student, who works on both the physical and computer generated sections of the Special Effects course, said: ‘Today has been really interesting. It’s great to see behind the scenes and the process that goes into making such a film.  Plus, it has been a really good way to meet contacts and build bridges. I’ve got two business cards already.’

Double Negative started as a boutique studio in 1998 with just 15 staff, it now employs more than 900 people and has worked on some of the biggest films of the past decade. Karen Joseph, from the award-winning studio, spoke about employment opportunities in the industry. She said: ‘The UK is a growing player in this market and there are around 5,000 people employed in the visual effects industry across the UK and EU. There are plenty of opportunities to succeed.’

Her co-worker Julian Foddy, CG Supervisor on the recent hit movie Paul, played students the Inception show-reel the Academy would have seen. He then went through several scenes from the film, including the now-famous ‘city-folding’ image, explaining how each one was crafted. Third-year student Claire Ritchie was also impressed with the Inception presentation. She said: ‘Finding out some of the secrets and techniques used to make Inception was fascinating, especially as I’m focusing on the CGI side of special effects.’

But for all the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, one key message was apparent throughout: you have to work hard. Adrian Woolard said: ‘The industry is very competitive. You have to think about that and be motivated to succeed. If I had to make one brutal observation about the industry, it would be… be prepared to work really hard.’