The voice of the pros: Shelley Page, Head of Talent at Locksmith Animation in London

Shelley Page, thank you for your time and congratulations on an incredible career.

Can you tell us more about your current position at Locksmith Animation?

Since 2019, I have been Head of Talent for Locksmith Animation in London. Locksmith is a feature animation production studio. We have two main locations, one in Los Angeles and the other in London.

We are currently working on two animated films with an international scope: Bad Fairies, a subversive musical comedy centred on a gag of badass London fairies, directed by Megan Nicole Dong, creator of the Centaurworld series; and The Lunar Chronicles, an intergalactic odyssey combining science fiction and tales from our childhood, directed by Noëlle Raffaele (DC Superhero Girls, Lego Ninjago) and produced by Christina Steinberg (the Spider-Verse saga).

In addition to these two films, we also have a number of other projects in development.

What is your proudest project to date?

It’s hard for me to choose just one, but I think the one that made the biggest impression on me during its production was The Prince of Egypt, the very first animated feature from Dreamworks Studios.

It was an extremely ambitious project, and we were starting from scratch. More than once, I wondered whether the film was really going to come off. To give you an idea of the challenges we had to overcome: we had no FX department, and we had to split the Red Sea in two!

When we finally managed to finish the film, and it was shown to the team for the first time, I realised that I was crying with emotion, the moment was so strong. I turned around, and my colleagues were all in the same state. In terms of emotion, this is without doubt the project that has had the biggest impact on me.

Since then, there have been many others, including Dragons and, more recently, Ce Noël-là, which we managed to bring to fruition despite a production pandemic. But the memory of The Prince of Egypt remains engraved in my mind.

What drives you today, after a career spanning more than forty years?

The easy answer would be to say that my career has been a long, quiet river, with one project following another seamlessly. But in reality, it never works like that, and you always find yourself juggling six projects at once, while new opportunities present themselves. So it’s a constant exercise in acrobatics.

What I like about my job is that I now have the opportunity to support projects from start to finish, by recruiting talent for our productions. And even if, when a project is nearing completion, I’m already concentrating on the next one, I’m lucky enough to be integrated into the whole chain. So when the film arrives in cinemas, I feel a real sense of pleasure and accomplishment. It’s a bit like the best of both worlds in this industry.

Speaking of the industry, how do you see it today?

There’s no denying that the animation industry today is in the midst of a major transformation, and that last year was marred by a large number of redundancies. I have a great deal of sympathy both for the young graduates who are trying to break into the sector today, and for the professionals with established careers who are having to navigate in a new context.

But I think the truth is that there are still plenty of opportunities out there. Children’s TV series are on the up, agencies are recruiting, and projects such as Arcane or Love, Death, Robots have shown the public’s appetite for this type of animation.

In the past, the animation industry was limited to feature films and television series, and these were the only possible avenues. Today, with the diversification of platforms, the rise of the video game industry, and new ways of consuming online, I’d say the sector is doing very well, despite the recent upheavals.

What do you think makes a good professional in the current climate?

For me, these are the same characteristics that were valued at the start of my career: a good professional is someone who has ambition, because it remains a difficult sector; someone who has the ability to adapt to the project they are joining, and who shows curiosity and openness to change; and someone who is enthusiastic, motivated and willing, ready to integrate into a team and contribute to it.

And this last aspect is undoubtedly the most important. A professional’s ability to listen, to receive feedback and to give it sympathetically is essential today.

When I conduct interviews, the candidate’s personality is at least as important as their animation skills.

Do you think that young graduates are sufficiently prepared to enter the sector today?

What is certain is that some are better prepared than others. The advantage of a course like ESMA’s is that students get to work on a project in an ecosystem very similar to the one they encounter when they join an animation studio. In my opinion, this is crucial to understanding that this profession is above all a collective and collaborative experience. These students are not guided by their ego, and that makes their integration much smoother.

How are new technologies changing the way you work at Locksmith?

To be honest, I’m in the worst position to talk about this! But what I can tell you is that we’re already using Unreal Engine for the previs stages, and that it saves our teams an enormous amount of time.

We developed techniques for building environments for Ce Noël-là, and we’re continuing our research into the projects I mentioned earlier, each with its own specific constraints: vast environments to create for The Lunar Chronicles project, and realistic settings for Bad Fairies, which takes place in London.

But on the whole, technology remains at the service of creativity at Locksmith. As a partner studio, we collaborate with other studios and adapt to their pipelines, while maintaining a global vision of all our activities and developments.

And what about AI?

At Locksmith Animation, generative AI is not a technology that we use, but it is indeed the subject of debate and questioning in our industry. Without being able to predict what the future holds, it reminds me of the questions our colleagues at Dreamworks shared about 3D at the end of the 1990s.

There was a lot of nervousness around this subject at the time, and twenty years on we can see that 2D animation is flourishing more than ever. It’s very difficult to predict these developments. I think the impact will be more on the way audiences consume content, rather than on the people who produce it.

What do you see as the key trends in the industry over the next few years?

As I mentioned earlier, I think that series like Arcane or Love, Death, Robots have had a very strong impact on the industry, and that the trend towards more animation aimed at adults will continue. Ten years ago, anime was still just a niche. Today, this kind of animation is everywhere, spreading a new, faster, more adult form of storytelling, with a completely different aesthetic.

That said, there is still a place for animation aimed at family audiences, whether in 2D or 3D. The collective experience of cinema remains important, and the impact of films like the ones I’ve created over the course of my career will (I hope) remain very strong with young audiences.

What advice would you give to students looking to enter the industry today?

Here are a few tips: keeping your LinkedIn profile up to date also allows you to see a potential candidate’s career and experience at a glance. And when you land an interview, find out about the person you’re going to be talking to. It’s always more interesting to have a conversation than a simple question-and-answer session.

But my main advice for those who want to work in the industry, and more specifically at Locksmith: be very precise in your research. There’s a lot of information on our website about the different people who work with us, our directors, our artists, and from that you can also deduce our needs. In fact, we won’t be looking for the same profiles depending on whether the project is in the development phase or the production phase. Animation skills are a must, but we’re also looking for more specialised profiles, with a desire to discover more specialised areas such as storyboarding, layout or story development.

Finally, don’t be afraid to explore more management- and production-oriented roles. These positions are less well known, but are just as essential to the success of the film. We don’t get many applications from people who describe themselves as “department coordinator”, or team leader, yet this is a crucial role, combining creativity and production supervision.

I think that this type of profile would benefit from being promoted to students, through meetings with professionals during their training for example. The link between studios and schools needs to be as strong as possible, so that students have every chance on their side when it comes to applying.

Find out more about Locksmith Animation’s productions here.