This doesn’t come from personal experience but I’ve known a few people who have gotten an interview and a couple who have gotten into the pups program. Your reel has rigging so I’m sure you know you are gonna most likely get rigging questions. From what I understand it’s just an interview to get to know you personally and to see if you got the background that backs up your reel. Questions about how you accomplished a certain asset on your work or a challenge that you faced and were able to solve. Studios love problem solvers from what I’ve seen. Interview is nothing to fret about. Just be yourself and be confident about your work and you will do just fine. Best of luck.
I interviewed for pups back in 2011. They asked for specifics on challenges I faced and how I solved any problems I ran into.
If I remember right, they wanted to know if I had written scripts for anything, my face count, and how long it took to render. (Truth be told I had no idea what I was doing–everything was a load of guessing, trial and error)
It was a group interview–me on conference call with around 5 Pixar folks. I could tell I was super out of my depth. All my CG stuff was from my first semester as an animation student. I definitely did not get the internship, haha, but it was a valuable experience and I knew that the technical side was not the sort of job I wanted.
First of all CONGRATS!!! That’s awesome to hear you got an interview! I am a long time troller of this thread and I have applied for (and been rejected) a few years in a row in the past. This year was different. LONG story short, I’ll be heading to Pixar June 1st to start as a Rendering TD Resident. Although my process was VERY in depth technically and VERY long (November-February and a total of 5 interviews with TD’s) I thought that I could provide you with some stuff that I went through.
Since my position there is heavily based on my coding…they asked a lot about that. We talked a lot about my reel at first, the usual, “what were some of the problems you ran into during this piece and how did you come about solving this issues.” Although simple to answer… this question can be easy to answer quickly…but TAKE YOUR TIME! they are looking for your process. The main goal that they want to get out of this question is HOW you got there and WHY. They want to use this question to literally read how you would solve other problems. They want to hear logical solutions…but also that you understand why the issue is caused…and most importantly how you can avoid something like this in the future. Being PROACTIVE is huge in technical situations.
After we went through a few of similar questions, we went through my background. Mostly about my current job as a Junior TD for a Broadcast/Jumbotron animation company. They wanted to know my experiences working there and we got really in depth about coding and how I work with other people’s code (finding bugs and fixing them and whatnot).A lot of questions about time management, quality control, etc.
The last piece from my interview experience that I can share is just what other people are saying… BE YOURSELF! They not only want to test you on your artistic and technical ability…but they need to make sure that you are someone that people there WANT to be around 8 hours a day. Being fun in appropriate situations…being intelligent in necessary situations…being creative in tricky situations. Be calm…Collected…and on top of your answers. Try not to struggle through a question (this shows uncertainty) and if you honestly don’t know something that they ask…say so! They are all insanely nice and fun to talk to. If you can slip something in there to make them laugh…it will lighten up the conversation.
I’d be happy to share more…but this post is pretty long as it is. I hope this helps!!! Keep us posted and Hope to meet you this summer!!!
Usually the first interview is a phone screen with a recruiter to make sure you aren’t a psycho or anything…Why do you want to work at pixar…where do you see yourself in 5 years…Tell me about yourself…blah blah blah. Hopefully you get Peggy…she is a SWEETHEART and I’ve been in contact with her a lot lately, she really is awesome but VERY knowledgeable…so don’t get caught slipping because she knows what she’s talking about.
Congratulations on getting the Rendering TD position! I hope to see you too in Summer. Feel free to drop me an email, you can find it on my website. Thank you so much for the detailed advice, I’m going to save it as a document. HAHA. I’m so nervous and excited at the same time. And yes! I was told that Peggy will be calling me, in like 2 hours hahahha. Alright, I shall try to keep calm and yea, I’ve always loved to be in situations where I get to be myself. Thank you so much, your reply really means a lot to me!
Thank you thirdchildart for the heads up! I hope you get it this time!
Thank you Jerbear! I have been told that there will be a technical interview if I pass this personal one. Heh!
Does anyone know if just people with reels/portfolios get phone interviews? For some reason I remember reading that on a past summer intern thread but that seems odd to me.
Hey guys, thanks for your support. It was a very brief one, like most of you have expected, just wanted to check if I was human or not. Haha. Usual questions like “Tell me about yourself?”, “Which school are you from?”, “Which is your favourite piece from your reel?”, I explained how I had to take a crash course to learn rigging, so I was asked “How long was the crash course, how did you learn?”, I explained more about scripting and she asked “What kind of scripts do you do?”… Yea, and then asked if I have any questions, I asked about my visa, she said she would check and it should be fine. Yea and we said goodbye. And then, she called me again 'cause she forgot one question ahaha, she wanted to know if I was part of designing/modeling the characters.
All these in like 5 minutes I must say. It went so quickly. I’m set for the next interview next week with 5 to 6 TDs
Andrea, was your profile updated when you got your email for an interview, or no? Just wondering if our faith in the updating is wishful thinking or not
Teabat I read from the 2014 thread that a previous Production Intern candidate (who got into the final round of interviews before Pixar pulled the positions for that season) didn’t have a single update on their dashboard before getting a call. Checking on our dates may be nothing more than keeping-the-idleness-away activities, haha. I just checked my application, and it was updated March 28th in the early morning. If this still means something, hopefully it’s good news!
Just found this board and it is very reassuring/terrifying haha. I was wondering how people who were asked to interview were notified. I realized yesterday that my phone has not been working for the past few days, and I’m afraid I missed a call. I applied for seven(?) internships.
Hi awhite, welcome to the support crew! Here’s to hoping this board calms your application jitters! From the folks here, all that’s heard back for phone screening/interviewing has been the PUP last/early this week.
Looks like we’v e made it through another weekend! Good luck to those with phone interviews this week. Excited to see what department is up next after PUPS.
On a totally random note- has anyone not been updated at all? Just trying to figure out if they still partially review other applications besides the one being called for interviews (So right now, other internships besides PUP).
