Now having said all of this the area where I feel the school failed the most was in post graduation. Now before you say anything about the school not handing you a job and you having to work for it, I know all of that and knew it when I graduated. I’m talking about them allowing you to keep projects for your personal demo reel(which is what I was told we would be allowed to do). For instance my lab group had to redo the voices, music and sfx for the quidditch match in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This was to be the culmination of everything we had learned and the final piece to our demo reel. We weren’t given a copy of the finished product like we had been with everything else at the end of the class. We were told to email our lab instructors upon graduation to receive a copy of this project. I graduated in July of 2003, and that October I had an interview with Bethesda Softworks(the elder scrolls series) for a post production engineer position. I had been emailing my lab instructor over the summer, asking for a copy of my lab groups app project. When I finally got a response from him this is what I was told:”we had to destroy your post production project because we didn’t receive permission to use the video portion of Harry Potter.” It bothers me that the school wouldn’t acquire what they need in order to use the video. It made me feel like we worked hard that final month for nothing. Again we were told that this would be highlight of our demo reel. You can’t blame me for feeling the way I do. This was out of my hands at this point.

I ended up moving to los Angeles and I worked for a few different studios. I have found that the schools reputation is mixed. Some studios I went to considered full sail grads a dime a dozen, and really arrogant while others considered a blessing. I did have the chance to work with Nas, kalis, and prince(yes you read that right) so overall I will say my experience was good.

I’ll leave you all with this, back everything up, even if your lab instructor tells you not to.