Well, the Pixar interview went pretty well I think, and the feedback seemed to be all positive. There were some tense moments afterwards waiting to hear if they were going to offer me a job straight away. When they called later in the day as they said they would, it turned out they were not prepared to make an immediate offer, which I completely understand. The whole interview arrangement was pretty rushed. I don't imagine that Pixar hurries into anything, let alone a contract with Donnie Walsho! So, I said thanks for the interview, and that I looked forward to the next step in the process. That is a face to face interview apparently. They said they would like to set that up for later in the year! So, understandably I am excited about that!
Sunday, the day before the interview, I headed to The Kino Cafe just to collect my thoughts. I just needed some time to myself to let a little stream of consciousness run out. At times I find this really helps and this case was no exception! I wrote something like ten pages of long hand notes on my thoughts about my work, film in general, also as it applies to lighting in particular, computer graphics, why I do what I do, why working at Pixar would appeal to me... all the things that randomly popped into my head when contemplating probably the biggest interview of my career. I felt a lot better after that, a lot more together and calm, and I hope that came across in the interview.
The interview was really interesting and engaging as one would expect. What I didn't expect was how much interest they showed in my pre-film work experience. So many questions relating to doing things on a smaller scale, without support of a major pipeline. How had I progressed to the stage of my career that I am at now, why had I succeeded in certain situations, etc. That really threw me off guard. I was expecting that they would be much more interested in my recent higher profile work.
What was amazing was listening to two lead lighters talk about what they expected from the lighting team at Pixar and how creative the job can be. They are trying more and more to remove the technical hurdles and really just get lighters to focus on the art. Something that live action lighters have been doing for years.
Overall, I left the interview feeling like I really had a great goal to shoot for and had passed the first crucial test on the way to "one of those jobs people talk about." What a blast. Here's hoping I hear from them later in the year!
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