Amy Cuthbertson
Head of Tracking for Mill Film and TV
“I’m so very proud to be one of the first escapees”
It’s a snazzy title and one that Amy certainly deserves. Heading up the tracking team, Amy is an integral part of the furniture at The Mill, someone whom they rely upon to produce fantastic work. Now at the very top of her game with a BAFTA under her belt, Amy has come a long way since the days of studying at Escape, which she told us ‘felt just like yesterday’.
“Once an escapee always an escapee – it’s like being a member of an elite gang and it definitely gives you a little bit more kudos in the industry!” Amy started off a long way from CG though. After studying at University, she started thinking about becoming an animator – the only problem being that Amy felt she couldn’t draw. “Honestly, putting pen to paper just doesn’t work for me. It’s when I realised that it might be possible to pursue this career using software that I started doing some research”. Amy thought in the same way most of our graduates do, that going back to university for another three years just wasn’t a viable option. “I needed the skills to get a job and that’s exactly what Escape gave me”.
Amy was at a graduation fair with her sister when she found Escape Studios’ stand. Amy openly admits that she had no idea of the processes involved in CG at that point - to her it seemed like “some hugely complicated thing that very clever people did with computers in Hollywood”. But as soon as Amy discovered what it was possible to learn in three months, it seemed like the perfect avenue to go down in order to follow her love of animation. Amy studied our Character Animation course and enjoyed every minute of it. “It was great fun learning about animation principles in general and how they translate to Maya – hard work, but worth all of the effort”.
Amy’s credits since starting work at The Mill are impressive, from ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1’, ‘127 Hours’, ‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘Dr Who’, ‘Sherlock’, ‘Merlin’ and ‘Nike: Write the Future’, the list goes on. “They are a great company to work for and I can honestly say, no matter how long the day is, I’m always happy to get up for work in the morning”.
“Escape didn’t just help me when it came to study and skills, it was the contacts that they had. The recruitment service was excellent – they introduced me to companies that I had never heard of before. They placed me in lots of jobs before I got to The Mill and it was a great way of getting comfortable with industry practice”.