Pros
Just two first lines to mention Montreal Compositing department has just a few compers left now. This departement is pretty much closed. The following review relate how it was before. - When I was there, artists were openminded, friendly and nice. You can make friends here that will still be your friends out of job. (Which is not always the case) - You could work on big shots even if you're a Junior, but only if sups and prod think you can handle it. Feels just great to not only have boring shots when you're Junior. - Academy program was just great. - I survived OT with a maximum of 80hrs/week. (Usually people did more in Comp). Expect 40hrs at the beginning of the show, 50 to 55 hours in the middle, and 60, 70 and up 3 months before the final delivery. - Paid OT and large OT food choice. - You have access for free to : Breakfast, soda, coffee and tea - Great career oppotunity when you're a beginner.
Cons
- There were so many shot reassignments! Prod teams broke your heart by taking away from you the shot you worked on for weeks, and they didn't understand why it bothers you... They also didn't realize they're losing a crazy amount of time by asking people to pick up someone else shot. -> Shots that were comped very fast due to constant crunch time, resulting in extremely messy scripts. - No life outside of MPC. I've seen people trying to have constant activity, once a week after work. Prod kept assigning them OT and so they were either losing their shots or sacrificing their yoga, gym or whatever. - If you were part of the lucky ones (as I did), you've had some long cool down moments. (Several weeks with nothing to do) Followed by big and heavy crunch time. If you were not part of the lucky ones, you were just moving from the end of a show crunch time to the beginning of another show crunch time. Non stop OT. - You literally feel you're changing company everytime you're assigned on a new show. Nobody knows you, and you have to work really hard to prove you can handle good shots. Tiring after 2 or 3 show.