EPIC GAMES UNREAL FELLOWSHIP FOR VIRTUAL PRODUCTION
Epic Games has officially launched the Unreal Fellowship. The goal of the four-week intensive training experience is to help experienced industry professionals in film, animation, and VFX learn the Unreal Engine, gain a deeper understanding of state-of-the-art Virtual Production tools, and to guide the incoming generation of teams in real-time production.
The Unreal Fellowship will be executed remotely with up to 50 Fellows who are currently being selected. In addition to all of the learning tools Epic is making available to the Fellows, they will also be incentivizing them with a $10,000 stipend to cover any expenses and ensure they are able to denote the appropriate amount of time to the curriculum over the course of the Fellowship.
“We sincerely wanted to help people who are out of work during this time. We wanted to give them an opportunity to learn more about Unreal and Virtual Production, not only from Epic instructors, but from the community of experts we have built specifically for the Fellowship,” said Connie Kennedy, Head of LA Lab & member of the Unreal Fellowship’s Selection Committee at Epic Games. “If you can’t make it accessible financially, you automatically exclude so many people. We’re doing everything we can to overcome the barriers- especially the barrier of thinking you can’t do it, when you actually can.”
The Fellowship uses Unreal’s Online Learning courses as a guide for the foundational skills Fellows will be learning. It will also offer twenty-two hours of dedicated live training, weekly guest lectures from Virtual Production experts, weekly mentorship meetings, virtual office hours with a live instructor, as well as a dedicated Slack channel for communication amongst Fellows. During the estimated ninety-four hours of content and project-based work, fellows will learn the fundamentals of Unreal Engine, model ingestion, animation and mocap integration, lookdev, lighting setups, and cinematic storytelling.
Epic’s mission is to ease you into the world of real-time technology and help you succeed in building teams that are proficient with the latest storytelling tools and techniques. This is not the first time Epic Games has taken the time to prepare the next generation of talent. We’ve seen it through their Mega Grant program and the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine, along with all of the updates, has always been free for users, giving them the opportunity to explore and break the barriers of what we think is possible.
“At Epic, we have always believed in the transformative power of real-time computer graphics for film and television production,” said Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games. “With the Unreal Fellowship we are actively investing in visionaries who will be responsible for crafting the stories of tomorrow to ensure that they are armed with a deep understanding of the many ways that real-time technology can benefit their projects.”
Epic’s L.A.-based team is driving the live training and real-time collaborative components of the Fellowship. A minimum of five years of experience in commercial film and television production, immersive entertainment or game development is required, along with the ability to commit to the Fellowship full-time for four weeks.