SAE Sydney opens their new $12mil campus to the public

Ever dreamed of developing a career in film? SAE Sydney is opening its doors to their brand new $12 million, seven-story state-of-the-art campus for the annual Open Day on Saturday August 5 from 11am-3pm. If you’re considering studying Film, Audio, Animation, Design or Games – now is the time to speak to their experienced team and pursue your passion in the creative media industries. Experience their amazing facilities, tour the campus, talk to staff and join a range of interactive workshops throughout the day, and there’s games, prizes and a few surprises in store.

Register and attend for the chance to win a pair of Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless Headphones – visit sae.edu.au for more information.

Within two years of graduating with a Bachelor of Film from SAE Sydney, Kieran Lim has worked for two of Australia’s biggest, internationally accredited, animation and visual effects studios, Animal Logic and Iloura.

Kieran lives and breathes film. His passion for filmmaking and photography (pretty much everything relating to cameras) inspired his studies and pursuit of a career in visual effects. This led him to the doors of Animal Logic where he enrolled in a 3-week training course that developed roto/plate clean-up artists. Later that same year he applied for a second two week training course that specialised in camera/matchmoving. With a strong recommendation from his teacher, Kieran was offered a job to work in Animal Logic’s Roto/Paint department.

During his time with the studio Kieran has worked as a Digital Artist on the well-known Marvel series, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. His role saw him extract the characters from the plate footage through rotoscoping, plate clean up, removing lights/rigging and any features not wanted in the footage. 

For his next role Kieran moved across to Iloura studios and worked as a Matchmove Artist – adding CGI to characters while animating and recreating the movements of the actors on set in a 3D space for two feature films, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Bright (starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, due for release on Netflix in August).

Currently, Kieran is working in a camera tracking artist role at Animal Logic on the live-action adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s classic novel, Peter Rabbit. Set for cinematic release in 2018, the film will feature the voices of two well-known Australian actresses, Margot Robbie and Rose Byrne.

We spoke to Kieran about his time studying at SAE as we wanted to find out what advice he can pass on to potential film students aspiring to achieve a successful a career in his footsteps.

What are your fondest memories of your time at SAE?
Filming the strangest action films with my classmates, editing them throughout the week, and doing it all over again the following week. Each time we would think of something cool we had seen in class we’d try to copy it. Once we tried to recreate the scene from the film Alien where the xenomorph bursts through the chest of John Hurt’s character. We sprayed fake blood over the entire house. It was just as much fun cleaning up the mess!

What did you love most about studying at SAE?
Having such a huge range of high-end film equipment at our fingertips. We were able to rent high tech cameras and lights over the weekend to shoot our short films – it was the best. There were many times where we would rock up to the camera department on a Friday afternoon to collect a huge load of gear to play with and make films over the weekend, before returning it all on Monday.

Can you shed some light on how studying at SAE has led you to where you are now?
The phase “just go out and shoot it” has been permanently tattooed on my brain from the lectures. It really is the best way to learn. I think if I didn’t get out every weekend trying my hand at shooting short films, or even helping out others on their little projects, I wouldn’t have acquired the problem solving experience that now comes naturally to me when I’m on set.

What have been your career highlights?
Recently it would have to be working on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 at Animal Logic. It was so surreal going in everyday and working on such iconic actors. I still can’t believe my name is actually in the credits with Chris Pratt!

What do you enjoy most about working in your industry?
The different types of films you get to work on is amazing. No two films are ever the same which is great as it keeps the work interesting. It’s always such a surreal experience walking in the front doors of the studio and seeing props from such iconic films as 300 and The Matrix. Also the free food.

What advice would you give to students aspiring to become successful in their field?
Grab a camera, get your friends together and just go shoot something! The amount of experience I got from going out and shooting anything was well worth it. Many times we would fail, but we learned from our mistakes and because of that we became better filmmakers. On set there is rarely a film problem I have not encountered that I don’t know how to problem-solve. I owe this to the fact that I spent so much of my free time during my studies at SAE shooting films.

SAE Sydney opens its doors on Saturday August 5 from 11am – 3pm. Register online at sae.edu.au for your chance to win a pair of Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless Headphones.

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