Mainframe Studio Visit

www.mainframe.co.uk

Earlier this month we visited London with University to look around Multimedia design companies. During this trip we visited Mainframe, who describe themselves as,

"Mainframe is a creative production studio, specializing in motion graphics and animation for ads, promos and branded creative content. Most of the work is for broadcast but output included projects for cinema, online and mobile media".

Before the visit, I checked out their website and was amazed at the work they created. As I am creating a channel ident myself for my final major project, I found their idents fascinating especially for the MTV UK Rock Chart that had lots of watercolour effects on it, something that I have been interested in within my research.

When we arrived at the studio, the founder and MD of Mainframe, Adam Jenns greeted us and shown us around the building, which was very spacious considering the amount of people that worked there. The place looked relaxed feel about it and looked like a university room to me the way the staff were dressed and interacting. This is something I took as a pleasant surprise because taking a dramatic change from university life to a working environment wouldn't be such a change.

We got shown around each room and explained which each area was for such as full time staff and freelancers who had their own room. The whole place had a wide open plan which seemed to give a great feel and I didn't feel uncomfortable what so ever.

From this, Adam took us into a smaller area and shown us the current Nickelodeon ident that hadn't even been on television yet, which I really enjoyed. I loved the ident they created, the way the mixed live footage and animation was amazing. On the mainframe website, I found the making of the Ident which I have included at the bottom of this. It just shows how much work and effort went into the making of it, from the sketches right through to the final piece.

Adam then gave us some advice when coming to creating showreels and when contacting studios regarding jobs. He explained how companies such as themselves get hundreds of emails a week with showreels and links to websites on them, he said he expects a showreel to be short with only the best work on. He said he gets bored and frustrated with long repeated showreels and websites that take forever to load or find the work. He said for us all to have our best work on our online portfolio home page so the user doesn't have to navigate throughout the website. Another thing that he disliked was students who use 'company names' instead of their full name, for example www.redbanana.com instead of www.aaronnicholas.com. He described this as a pet hate and that only companies should use company names.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of the visit and the advice was very useful. I could see myself working in a place similar to this and I may even contact Mainframe in Manchester to see if they would like to see my work.