In less than two years since he graduated from the Sound Design for Visual Media program at VFS, Eduardo Castillo has established himself as a pro sound designer, racking up credits on ads for Doritos, Corona, and even the Singaporean Army (when they give a note on your work, you take it) through his employer, Prado Sur Audio in Mexico City. He recently talked to us about how he got started on this career path, and his passion for sound that keeps him going.

Q: Hi, Eduardo. Thanks for answering some questions for us. Could you begin by talking about what drew you to designing sound?

A: At the beginning, it was all about the music for me. I started listening to a genre called Psychedelic Trance, which is a combination of electronic music with lots of sound design, and that got me into making my own sounds using synths. I think I like this genre because the speaker is always filled with the whole frequency range – it is a very full sound. I try to apply that into my sound designs. Then, I started to pay more attention to the way everything sounded whenever I went to the movies, especially in horror films where the sound design complements the music and vice versa. Sometimes I even lost the plot because of that. I realized that was what I wanted to do, and after some time of searching for schools, I realized VFS was the best option.

Q: Since you graduated, you’ve landed contracts for pretty big companies like GMC, Corona, and Doritos. What’s it like working on such a large scale?
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As many grads know, a year at VFS is hard. Students are put through the wringer, and come out with top-quality reels and portfolios. The rigorous curriculum prepares them to become a part of the professional community right after they graduate.

That couldn’t be more true for someone like Sound Design for Visual Media grad Craig George. Ever since he got his sound reel in front of the right set of ears, Craig’s been swamped with work. But, as he explains,”it’s a good kind of hectic.”

Q: Hi, Craig. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule for this. Could you start off by talking about what you do as a sound professional in the film and television industry?
A: I work as a freelance contractor for a few of the studios in town. My roles vary, depending on which studio I am working for and which project I am working on. My work ranges from providing sound editorial services (SFX, Dialogue, Music, and Foley) to completing all final deliveries of a production that will eventually make it to broadcast television or into theatres.

Q: What first attracted you to this field?
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We’re about a month away from the VFS 2009 Summer Intensives! Due to the high demand, extra dates have been added for the Writing for Film & Television, Film Production, Acting for Film & Television, Sound Design for Visual Media, and Animation & Visual Effects Intensives.

The Game Design Intensive and the 2nd date for the Writing for Film & Television Intensive are almost sold out! Don’t miss your chance!

As announced in March, these 5-day creative boot camps put those who are considering attending Vancouver Film School in the trenches of their chosen program, where they’ll gain hands-on experience under the guidance of VFS’s staff of industry professionals.

Check out vfs.com/summer2009 for more information and to register.

For a while now, the Academy Award-winning, L.A.-based animation and visual effects studio, Rhythm & Hues, has recognized the work of talented VFS grads and hired them for such projects as The Golden Compass, The Incredible Hulk, and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Wednesday night, Barbara McCullough, Manager of Recruitment, and Matt Shumway, Animation Supervisor, chatted with students from 3D Animation & Visual Effects, Classical Animation, Digital Design, and Sound Design for Visual Media about the potential opportunities for employment open to VFS grads eligible to work in the U.S.

Shumway also plugged Rhythm & Hues’ four-week Animation Apprenticeship Program, which is a paid internship at their L.A. studio that gives fresh grads some hands-on experience in a professional environment.

“The Apprenticeship Program is awesome,” Shumway said. “I wish they had it around when I was starting out… We hire almost 95% of [our apprentices].”

That was the case for Josh Herrig, a 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad who landed an R & H Apprenticeship  and was then hired to work on projects like Resident Evil: Extinction and The Incredible Hulk.

As in most other creative disciplines, timing is everything. When Rhythm & Hues was in crunch-mode during production on Alvin and The Chipmunks, they quickly hired 100 animators (almost ten times their regular staff size for this department) to meet their deadline.

“That’s usually a good way to break into the industry – when people are in desperation-mode,” Shumway said.

Current VFS students are encouraged to whip their reels into shape before Rhythm & Hues starts work on their next production. They’re now working on Land of the Lost and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel.

We’re happy to see so many VFS grads and instructors lauded with nominations for this year’s Leo Awards, B.C.’s Oscars. We shouldn’t be surprised though – three of our grads won a handful of awards last year, and another four picked up Leos the year before that!

Here’s a run-down of this year’s nominees we’ll be cheering for:

John Sawa – Sound Design grad – Best Sound Editing in a Feature Length Drama for Impact.

Rob Boutilier & Josh Mepham – Classical Animation grads – Best Direction/Storyboarding in an Animated Program or Series for Kid vs Kat “Stall that Jazz”/”The Kitty Vanishes” (* Rob is also the creator of this series!)

Jesse Davidge & John Busby – Classical Animation grads – (2 nominations!) for Best Music Video for Tupelo Honey “Morphine” and “Not Alone”.

Bastiaan Van Rooden – Digital Character Animation grad – Best Student Production for Border.

Colby Johannson – Acting grad – Best Guest Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series for Reaper.

Mark Hollier – Sound Design grad – Best Overall Sound in a Short Drama for Sanguine.

Bonnie Lambie – Sound Design grad – Best Sound Editing in a Dramatic Series for The L Word

Chris McLaren – Sound Design Instructor – (2 nominations!) Best Overall Sound in a Short Drama for Valentines and Best Sound Editing in a Dramatic Series for The L Word.

Chris McIntosh – Sound Design Instructor – Best Overall Sound in an Animated Program or Series for Jibber Jabber.

Check out the complete list of 2009 Leo nominees. Congratulations to all, and good luck on May 8th and 9th!

Update: Whoops! One more name to add to the list. Film Production grad Matt Leaf was also nominated for Best Cinematography in an Information or Lifestyle Series for On Screen III “Shivers.”

Thanks for the info, Dwayne!

Update #2: Stop the presses! We found another VFS grad on the Leo Awards nominations list. Benjamin Arthur, the Acting grad who TV Guide nominated as one of the 50 Hottest Men on Fall TV last year, is up for a Leo in the Best Supporting Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series category for Less Than Kind.

Good luck, Benjamin and everyone else! The Celebration Awards Ceremony is tonight and the Gala Awards Ceremony is tomorrow. Keep your eyes peeled for stars in Vancouver this weekend.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II.  It was met with critical praise when it was released in February  and gamers have taken to its fresh answer to traditional real-time strategy gameplay: the game, developed by Vancouver’s own Relic Entertainment (also known for the acclaimed RTS Company of Heroes) has landed at the top of the global PC sales charts. Dawn of War II (or DoW2) has even pleased longtime fans of its source material, a dystopian tabletop wargame so popular it’s spun off a shelf’s worth of novels.

The setup almost doesn’t matter: a war-torn future (that would be the 40,000) and spacefaring races at war with each other, from your standard Space Marines – the focus of the single-player campaign – to Giger-esque Tyranids, elfin Eldar, and brutish Orks.

Scan DoW2’s credits and you’ll see a lot of VFS alumni. From Animation & Visual Effects, Senior Artist Ian Cumming, Lead Animator Nathan Hocken, and Artists Claire Roberts, Allan Dilks, Jefferson Takahashi, and Christine Hubbard. From Sound Design for Visual Media, there’s Dialogue Editor Allan Levy. From Game Design, Designers Francois Chaput, Mike Wilson, and Brock Robin, and Assistant Producer Mbuso Radebe.

Game Design alum Francois, who graduated in early ‘07, took time out of his busy schedule to talk about designing Dawn of War II, walking in the popular tabletop game’s considerable footsteps, and reinventing the RTS.

Hi, Francois! Thanks for taking the time to talk DoW2. First of all, how does it feel now that the game’s out?

Honestly, it feels pretty good. Reviews have been great, and sales have been strong, which obviously makes all the hard work feel worth it. But really none of that matters in comparison to when my brother in Manitoba calls me to tell me how much he loves the game, and that he’s skipped a few online Halo 3 matches he had planned just to play DoW2 instead.

Could you describe the broad strokes of what you were responsible for on DoW2? When readers play this game, what can they watch out for and say, “Hey, Francois did that”?

I was responsible for the creation of boss battles in DoW2, and their implementation.

This was a lot of fun, even though I felt as though I would have needed more time. It was a tough challenge, but one that forced me to improve as a designer as well, one that brought us a wealth of feedback – good and bad – from the community, reviewers and friends, and I look forward to putting what we’ve learned to use in the future.

I was also involved in many of the gameplay meetings as well, and contributed to things like the pacing of the game, how the game played out on the battlefield, and even what archetypes each of the squads would follow.

Warhammer 40K is pretty huge, with a rabid fanbase, novels – everything. Were you a player of the tabletop game? What was it like, as a designer, to translate a property like that into a video game experience?

Honestly, I had never played the tabletop game. Nor had I read any novels, or codices, or anything on this universe.

The only exposure I’d had prior to Dawn of War II was the original Dawn of War games and expansions,which I was playing before my interview at Relic to familiarize myself with their works other than Company of Heroes. In fact, the only exposure to tabletop Warhammer was when I bought some wood elf models to use in my D&D games.

So first thing I had to do was understand the tabletop fanbase, and what they tend to like. Then I had to do the same with the original Dawn of War’s fanbase. I did a lot of reading, a lot of research, I read so many forums, reviews, fan work and so on.

Eventually the universe became kind of a mindset, and I began to see how things could work as a game. Really, the vision the team had created before I joined the team in December 2007 was very strong and very clear to me, and I was able to contribute to that vision and help it evolve into what Dawn of War II came out.

So all that to say that it was very tiring, but very inspirational and challenging. I feel now as though I have, in a sense, lived the universe and time that everything takes place in, and if I could change anything, I would only want to do it again the exact same way as I did it before, only to experience it all over again.

DoW2 has been getting a lot of praise for its single-player campaign – although it gets away from what one might consider the traditional RTS model of base-building and so on. Even the notion of bosses – it’s not unprecedented, but it’s still sort of unusual. As a designer, how do you handle that challenge of meeting gamers’ expectations while trying to do something new?

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Just a reminder that our Sound Design Open House is this week. Join us on Wednesday, March 18 for a hands-on evening where you’ll be able to meet Head of Department Robert Grieve (Zoolander, The Big Chill and many other classic films) and other faculty, learn about the Sound Design for Visual Media program, and participate in an interactive recording session.

If you’ve ever thought about working with sound for film, TV, or video games, come on out!

VFS Sound Design Open House
Wednesday, March 18, 6pm
Sound Design Campus
1380 Burrard St. (3rd floor)

Register for this Open House at vfs.com/openhouse or call 604.631.3591.

Wondering about what it’s like to take a full-time one-year VFS program, but want to try it out before making a big decision about your educational future?

Introducing the 2009 VFS Summer Intensive Programs – 9 five-day programs beginning July 2009 that will allow you to experience our acclaimed one-year programs in a week of learning, doing, and having fun.

The curriculum will be delivered by VFS’s faculty of respected entertainment industry pros, and participants in each program will come away from their week with hands-on experience and real insight into what a one-year program at VFS can offer.

VFS Summer Intensive Programs include:

Experience VFS (a week sampling all of VFS’s programs) – July 20-24
Acting for Film & Television – July 6-10
Animation & Visual Effects – July 13-17
Digital Design – July 6-10
Film Production – July 13-17
Game Design – July 13-17
Makeup Design for Film & Television – July 13-17
Sound Design for Visual Media – July 6-10
Writing for Film & Television – July 6-10

Also, after completing a VFS Summer Intensive Program, students enrolling in a full-time VFS program will have the cost of their Intensive Program applied toward their tuition.

Summer Intensive Programs are open to anyone 17 years of age or older. Spaces are extremely limited and are expected to fill quickly. For full details and to register, visit vfs.com/summer2009. Hope to see you in July!

The jobs are pouring in for Sound Design grad Cameron Wiest in his hometown of Regina.

He’s been busy applying every skill he’s learned at VFS to everything from working on the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Dolan’s Cadillac – where he got to mingle with the film’s stars, Christian Slater and Wes Bentley – to creating a whole new sound for a video game set in an alien civilization. Cameron took time out of his busy schedule to give us the full update.

From the looks of your website, it seems as though you haven’t had a problem getting jobs in sound design. What was it like looking for jobs after graduating from VFS?

It was kind of hard and easy at the same time. When I graduated I had made a trip back home for a visit with family, and a bit of relaxation. Of course – after just graduating it was hard to relax, and all I really did was look for work, and make copies of my reel. After a couple meetings with different companies and film makers it was obvious that oddly enough, Regina was going to be prosperous for me. I was able to set up more work in one week here than I did in 2 years on the coast.

What kind of projects have you worked on so far? What has been your favourite?

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Sound Design grad Craig Carpenter had already established himself in the written and visual side of the entertainment arts industry before enrolling at VFS: Among other things, he’d been a freelance journalist and portrait photographer, worked for a radio station and a publishing house, and authored two published books.

Now he’s breaking into the sound side of the industry.

We first mentioned Craig when Hail Mary, a film he helped do the sound design for, premiered at the New York City International Independent Film and Video Festival.

Since graduating in 2007, Craig has been racking up credits in TV and film, freelancing as a Sound Designer through Rain City Sound – a company he started with fellow Sound Design grad Chris Ray – and as an Assistant Foley Artist for Boardwalk Foley, where he works with award-winning Foley artists Cam Wagoner and Shane Shemko, walking minor characters and backgrounds, and gathering props that he thinks they can use.

So far, he’s worked on episodes of The Guard, Sanctuary, and Stargate Atlantis, as well as numerous movies of the week (MOWs).

“VFS gives a good grounding in a lot of different areas of sound design. As far as Foley goes, they teach the theory quite well,” Craig says. “But it’s a long road to walk to get really good at it … Generally, I look at every opportunity I have to work with Boardwalk as continued education … I love it and hope that I can continue to have the good fortune of working with them.”

“I still work as a journalist and … as a portrait photographer. If a good book comes along, I will help publish it,” says Craig. “But I never had it in me to work full time as a reporter … I recently spent a week researching and writing a 1,000 word article for the Vancouver Sun. They paid me the princely sum of $200 for it. So, sound design will be what I do full-time. More than anything I want to love what I do for money. So, that’s it. I focus on learning and becoming good at things that I love. It’s starting to pay off.”