Calling Digital Artists, Animators, and more! Team 2976 is opening up positions for remote media team membership!

[Astrapi]

A whole new level of production is about to enter FRC

With the production of the 2023 robot reveal behind us, we’re looking ahead at plans for 2024. We plan on pushing our production value even further, which means we’ll need some serious manpower to get everything done in time. For reveal 2024, we plan on creating an original soundtrack, putting out more promotional materials, and most importantly, allowing up to 12 (yes you read that right, twelve!) FRC teams to sign up for slots to present with us on stage.

What will I be doing?

Once you join, you’ll be assigned to a specific “Craft Area” under our Reveal Production Unit, or RPU. Depending on your individual skillset, you’ll either report to the Director of Media (who is also the DP of the reveal event) or our Imagery Lead (IL). the DP handles any roles regarding stage design and video production, while the IL will lead the graphic design and art teams. Set designers will weave between the two, working with cinematographers and artists alike to create compelling sets for teams to film their reveal reels in. We expect remote positions to be fairly light in workload to ensure you aren’t overloaded (most of you will likely also be members of a local team IRL, we presume?)

How do I join?

Since we’re looking for self-driven individuals who really want to express their talent at a high level, we’ll be asking you a series of questions in this application, which is due by Sunday, June 4th. Please understand that this is our first year attempting to coordinate remote production members, so it might be a little messy at first as we figure out the best way to manage such a large production team. Due to the high-level nature of our production, we ask that applicants possess a minimum of 2-3 years of rigorous experience in their respective craft. Exceptions will be granted on a case-by-case basis to exceptionally talented individuals. For people looking for introduction-level work or lessons, we will be providing those to anyone interested in separate programs. The Reveal Production Unit is likely not the place you want to be as a brand-new artist.

Something of note is that these positions are not age-capped to the high school range - more experienced industry professionals are highly valued and we’ll onboard you as a media team mentor instead, where you’ll be able to provide insight to our talented team of artists who will be grateful to have your help. If you’d prefer to get more hands-on anyways but you’re out of high school, that’s also fine! Just let us know in the “other comments” section of your application.

Why does this feel like a job interview?

We run our media team in a way that closely mimics professional industry standard, so it might feel a little intimidating to see so many requirements, responsibilities, and other whatnot related to this posting. We assure you that the environment at team 2976 is very casual, welcoming, and fun. At the end of the day, it’s high school robotics after all - you’ll see once you join us that the industry-standard organizational practices actually make our media work much more fun than orgs that don’t push for the standard that we do.

Craft Areas

We’ve listed all of our available positions below - each specializes in a craft area that we believe will help applicants narrow down the focus of the work that they’ll be doing. Recommended qualifications are, as they imply, merely recommended - if we believe you possess a specific skill or talent that will push our production quality forward, we’ll be sure to find space for you. Additionally, some positions are open to multiple individuals, so while it may seem like your chances are low, we are likely able to take on upwards of 15 new production members this season.

3D Artist

Reporting directly to the Director of Media and 3D Team Lead, 3D artists will work to produce event-specific graphics such as the looping animation seen above. You’ll be working on mostly abstract 3D renderings with very little VFX work involved. Game designers and hobbyist artists are likely candidates for these positions.

Recommended Qualifications:

• Expertise in either Blender or Cinema 4D
• Good knowledge of Adobe After Effects
• Preferably as well, familiarity with Adobe Premiere Pro

Motion Graphics Designer

Reporting to the Director of Media, you’ll be working in Adobe After Effects to produce beautiful on-stage graphics to be played on the big screen. You’ll also be contacting presenting teams directly to work with them on their individual graphics.

Recommended Qualifications:

• Expertise in Adobe After Effects
  • Within this, we expect you to be well-versed with various plugins and features necessary for motion graphics-specific work
• Familiarity with Adobe Premiere Pro

Graphic Designer/Sketch Artist

This role is fairly straightforward, you’ll be working with the Imagery Lead to produce still imagery deliverables such as promotional materials for Instagram, merchandise, and anything else that doesn’t move! You will also occasionally work with motion graphics designers and 3D artists to produce preliminary sketches of their products.

Recommended Qualifications:

• Experience in sketch art - can be of any discipline but preferably fashion design, architecture, or as graphic design sketching
• Expertise in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
• Familiarity with deliverable formats (resolution, file size, etc) of various social media platforms

Post-Production

You’ll be working with the Director of Media to edit videos and process deliverables from our 3D and motion graphics departments. Expect to work on at least 2 big edits in your time with us. This position is also quite straightforward, so your application strength lies entirely in your editing skills that you show off to us!

Recommended Qualifications:

• Expertise in one of the following NLE programs: Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro
  • We prefer editors that work in the Adobe Creative Cloud, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t
• Familiarity with Adobe After Effects, Resolve Fusion, or Final Cut Pro Motion
• Experience working with cinema camera footage will help you get right into our projects a little better

Stage Design/Live Showrunner

This is by far our most specialized position, and we are looking for a very experienced individual who is able to teach us more about the ins and outs of live showrunning, set design, and effective practices to make our stage experience smoother. You’ll be working with both the Director of Media and the Imagery Lead to create a stage setup that both meets our budget and maximizes audience and presenter experience.

Recommended Qualifications:

• Any set design experience, preferably with newscasts (compared to, say, theatre production where set design looks a little different from what we do)
• Live showrunning experience
  • Industry standard practices highly preferred
  • Familiarity with technical aspects of stage operation (DMX light control, audio engineering, lighting programming) is heavily recommended. Individuals who meet this criterion are highly valued.
• Project Management experience (any scale of project - even just group production with a couple of people) is valued in this position.

Music Production

I guess we’ll have to make this info public in order to recruit for it, but we’re exploring ways we can make an ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK for Reveal 2024 (personally, I’m pumped)! In this, we’re looking for experienced mentors and members who can help guide us in this process. We expect the 2024 soundtrack to be orchestral with electronic samples and instruments mixed in. If you know how to help us, we’d appreciate having you on the team!

Recommended Qualifications

• I’m going to be honest, we are so inexperienced with music production that we don’t even know what programs we’ll be working in, so this position will largely be based on experience and your portfolio strength
• If you have connections to orchestras willing to help us record, we’d love to hear from you!

ON-SITE: Cinematographer

The post says “remote,” but we are also looking for more helpers in-person. If you’re an owner-operator or experienced student cinematographer in the Sammamish, WA area (or live close enough that you’d be willing to frequently visit us to help out), apply for this position.

Recommended Qualifications

• A healthy amount of time working with gimbals, cinema cameras, and being on production sets
  • Bonus points for being an owner-operator of a RED Komodo or Canon R5C/C70 that we can borrow for production!
• A can-do attitude!

Final Thoughts

We’re incredibly excited to ramp up work on Reveal 2024, and we think it’ll be perhaps the biggest leap in production value that the event has seen yet! While I personally am graduating this year, I expect to stay in touch with the production team to help out every once in a while. It’s been an incredible 3 years as this team’s Director of Media, and I hope that the department I built up will make something incredible in 2024 (coincidentally, 2976’s media department mission statement is “Make Something Incredible”).

Until next time, stay safe and charged up!

[Aaron_Li]

I took a look through the google form. I’m excited for your 2024 reveal video.

[MikLast]

@Astrapi

We run our media team in a way that closely mimics professional industry standard,

Will the pay match this standard?

[mdurrani834]

This all seems pretty cool, but I have some questions regarding this and how your other events have been ran. Is it true that teams who tried to drop out of your reveal event were threatened w/ fees of over $2,000? Can you explain more about this if I am missing important context? That is just what I have heard.

[Astrapi]

We explored policies regarding event dropping after a couple of pretty poor experiences but never billed any teams in 2023. That being said, there was a short lived policy that had the potential to rack up costs close to that number. It was introduced after all of the dropouts so no teams ever actually invoked the clause. Needless to say, it was rolled back pretty much on the day-of and never reintroduced. The 2024 policy likely will include a $50 security deposit for teams that will be refunded upon event completion - that way, teams with an emergency reason to drop can do so with not big repercussions while giving others an incentive to stick around if they don’t absolutely need to drop.

There’s a couple of other things we’re doing to ensure all teams’ mentors and members are fully in the communication loop this year as a couple of teams last year had mentors who didn’t even know they agreed to an event until very close to the date itself.

Again, we’re still in a process of learning and evolving as these events run yearly and we’ll be sure to take the lessons from 2023 with us going into the next production cycle.

[Astrapi]

As much as i wish we had the money, we can’t pay our members or mentors. In standard FIRST fashion, we’re asking individuals to volunteer their time and skills - that being said, nobody is pressuring people to join us and we hope that the individuals who choose to join us are here with enthusiasm for the event itself, and are willing to put in some volunteer hours to make it happen.

Also mentioned in the post, but remote members will receive workloads that match whatever personal schedule they provide to us - we’ll never ask anyone to do more than they can or WANT to do, since we’re aware that they will very obviously have an irl life to exist in.

[howlongismyname]

Hi! We appreciated the production effort and time spent on our robot reveal.

I would like to know why this policy reversal was never disclosed to teams? We were of understanding that the dropout policy continued beyond the initial date. I asked another reveal team and they were never notified of this change either.

From our understanding of the policy, teams had a one day notice of dropping out or getting the fee (would be invoiced 50 dollars per hour, which we were told that there were 50 hours of production effort), which wasn’t enough to time to discuss with the rest of the team (and another team dropped out due to this policy change)

Hopefully these are just growing pains of the program, but as a team that was a participant this year, it would have been nice to have more transparency on how the time was spent, how teams could have been involved, and the process behind crafting reveals.

Thank you!

[Astrapi]

The wording of the original policy to be honest wasn’t great as it was hastily written - we got caught up in a lot of other work and all that we did was edit the message later without a ping, assuming that teams would see it.

Part of that new showrunner position is to hopefully allow the DP to focus more on the organization and administrative side of reveal 2024 and avoid what i would largely consider a disastrous repeat of the 2023 dropping.

To preview what’s going to happen, teams that apply and are selected for Advance Selection will be asked to provide the security deposit of $50, and we will ask each team’s head mentor, president, and media lead (or appointed reveal production lead) to sign a form acknowledging the event’s existence, the timeline, and what we expect teams to contribute. More updates will be sent out to teams (probably biweekly as opposed to 2023’s monthly) with outlook on what’s going on internally and where progress is being made. To be clear, the deposit and forms don’t lock teams into the event - there will be a “no-penalties” drop out deadline around December where teams will have their deposits refunded if they drop by that date. After that, teams won’t receive their deposits back if they drop as we will be unable to replace them. Again, we set the deposit amount at $50 to ensure that dropping is a conscious decision that absolutely MUST occur for one reason or another, but if a team drops for a legitimate reason it won’t cause a huge burden. A lot of our team (myself included) felt like the 2023 drops were easily preventable with a simple acknowledgement form like the one we’re introducing in 2024.

We’re still a relatively new program, and things are bound to go wrong when we set our sights so high. We’re hoping that 2024 will bring a more organized and efficient production with the experience and lessons we’ve learned this year. We hope to see sushi squad back on the roster when we open up forms this summer!

Edit: to clarify another thing you mentioned - the 2023 policy was actually initially introduced with the one day delay as we knew about that team’s drop, and we wanted to let them drop without the fee before it went into effect. That being said, it was a pretty rash decision that we also did not fully calculate before sending hence why it was reverted pretty quickly.