Multiple Titles: Crowd

Over the years at MPC, I was in the crowd department for 7.5 years. I worked my way up from an artist to leading the show. My title was technically called a Lead, however it’s the equivalent to a department supervisor in other facilities such as DNEG. For 5 years, I was in this supervisory position. Fundamentally, I was responsible for delivering the final crowd output on a show. Leading a team of artists / tds, mostly I had a solid team of 5 per show. In peak times, it was common to double that number. Crowd at MPC was multidisciplinary, covering skill-sets across rigging, animation and fx simulation. The crowd department at MPC was the only department globally, meaning all of that type of work went through the small department in London. The type of work ranged from traffic systems, background civilians, creature swarms, spaceship battles, and hero-esque animation. The type of work varied, from the standard crowd work, to the more complex FX Simulation for example, specific light patterns through a school of prehistoric marine life (code behavioural logic). There were also those heavy character type of shots, such as The Lion King. Crowd and Animation always worked closely on many titles. It was an interesting department that saw its fair share of innovation.