Annemarie Gereis is a seasoned career coach and visual effects artist with a passion for empowering creatives to achieve their full potential.

Her visual effects journey started a decade ago, compositing on over 20 blockbuster films and TV shows across Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, and Sydney.

Some of Annemarie’s notable titles include Guardians of The Galaxy, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Power Rangers, Gotham, Minority Report, CSI and The Hunger Games: Mockingbird.

If all that wasn’t enough, Annemarie has also worked in the world of game design, delivering compositing and motion graphics for gaming companies, including Microsoft. 

AIT’s partnerships manager, Henry Dolezal, who was instrumental in organising the event, said, “Our students were beyond excited to listen to the tips and the speaker’s journey.”  

“The questions from the audience were on fire… Not to mention the line-up of people waiting to have a photograph taken with the speaker and all the additional questions asked afterwards.” 

It was a great night for our creative students, so let’s get stuck into a recap for those who couldn’t make it on the night. 

Inspiring the Next Generation to Build Their VFX Careers

On top of her impressive portfolio, Annemarie is also a career coach and professional speaker, so what prompted this move?

“This is something I always wanted when I was a student just like you guys,” Annemarie says. “I wanted someone there that I could always reach out to.”

Annemarie wanted someone to help her “to move into the roles that I wanted to move into.” But even before that, someone who could answer the question, “How on earth do you even get started?”

The Importance of Inspiration as a VFX Artist

Annemarie got her start when she travelled to Austin, Texas to finish her degree on exchange, being inspired by international travel, and the proximity of Hollywood.  

“Inspiration is really important.” 

“We had so many amazing blockbusters about 10, 15 years ago, that really pushed me to want to explore the US.”

At the University of Texas, Annemarie found out that one of her professors had worked closely with her heroes, “like, Wes Anderson.” 

“And it was just amazing at that point in time to have people who worked so close to Hollywood in the classroom with me.”

Outside of the classroom, Annemarie found other sources of inspiration, and described her first visit to “my favourite museum in the world, which is the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco. If you ever get the chance, please go.”

“It is such a magical experience. And then I had other experiences of going to Disneyland and then I went to Pixar on a tour, and then ended up at NBC going on a tour there. This was purely during my holidays.”

“The film that inspired me the most was Monsters, Inc., and I know it’s not even VFX, but I love Sulley’s fur. It was the first time I’ve ever seen, like, fur waving in the wind.”

“And I remember thinking, ‘How did they get fur in the computer? How does that even work?’ So I’d say that’s definitely my number one film in terms of what inspired me to get into the industry.”

“My point is, keep all these experiences, use that as your passion and your fuel to keep you going for what you want to do.” 

Getting Your First Job as a Visual Effects Artist

Annemarie graduated, and found herself wondering what would come next.

“Because of visa issues and that sort of fun thing, I had to come back to Sydney. So I ended up coming back being, like, okay. How do I get myself back to the US?” 

“So I basically did what I think most people do here. You sit on the internet, on LinkedIn, and like, a million job portals, and you’re just like, I’m just going to upload, upload, upload.”

“One of the things I noticed in doing this method is that it actually doesn’t take you very far. So I had to learn to change my method.” 

“What I ended up doing was having to reach out to people, like, physically in terms of, picking up the phone and actually giving people a call, doing research with these people online, starting conversations.”

Even with her new approach, Annemarie found herself struggling to break into the industry.

“Five months in, I ended up having to give myself a bit of a deadline.” 

This time, Annemarie was contacting companies with travel dates in mind. She would take one last shot at making it in America. 

“I gave them a deadline of, ‘If I come up to the US, would you interview me?’” 

“So I ended up receiving three messages once I made it to that hard deadline. And I ended up having the opportunity to fly up to the US and interview with Crafty Apes, Prologue, and Cantina Creative.”

Starting Out Small and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

“That brings us to the next point in my career. So Cantina Creative is a studio in Los Angeles that specialises in working with just a small, little client, called Marvel; and seeing their client list, I was like, oh, god. There’s no way that these people would even consider asking me to work on any of their films.” 

On the verge of landing her dream job, Annemarie found herself questioning whether she could do it. 

“There’s like no way. Like, I’m just a small little girl from Australia. It just didn’t make sense in my head.” 

“Why would they want to employ me, the small little Australian girl who lives on the other side of the world?”

“This is something I want you guys to take notice of. This is called imposter syndrome. I was having a lot of it at this point. But, lo, and behold, they gave me a chance. They invited me to do, I think, six months with them, and that turned into a year.” 

“It was one of the best experiences of my life.”

“They asked me to come work with them on Need for Speed.” 

“Cantina, works on a lot of the Marvel movies, but they had that opportunity to work on Need for Speed. And I want to also preface that, at this point in time, I always thought working for a very big studio was the way to go. So, like, Framestore. I remember being so disappointed that I could never score an interview with them, but I had no idea that Cantina was just going to blow me out of the water with big name clients and just amazing work. So I think that goes to show that it doesn’t matter how big or how small a studio is.” 

Learning on the Job at Cantina

In her first job at Cantina, Annemarie was thrown in the deep end… in a good way. 

“If you’re working on great work, embrace that. You never know how good the team can end up being.”

“I think the best friendships as well, do occur when your studio is small because you have the chance to meet everyone who does amazing work, and you also have the chance to work on multiple different roles and multiple different shows.”  

“As a junior artist at the time, I had no experience with After Effects, and we were working on After Effects. And so, again, this also goes to show, do not let your, junior knowledge or basic knowledge ever be the reason why you don’t choose to go for something, because people look for determination and resourcefulness and your ability to get up and do things and try things.” 

“I would not have had the chance to have worked on screen replacements if it wasn’t for the fact that this studio was small enough to allow the junior artist to do many different tasks and roles.” 

In the small team at Cantina, Annemarie was overawed by the trust that was placed in her. While the studio was working on a little movie called Guardians of the Galaxy, Annemarie was tasked with checking the consistency of screen replacements.

“I thought this was pretty interesting. The director, I think, at some stage was like, we don’t want to make Yondu’s tongue blue anymore. So every single shot, he had to have a pink tongue.” 

“The creative director at Cantina had actually asked me whether I wanted to check the consistency across the 15 shots. And that sort of just meant we did an overall colour grade before we delivered back to the client. And, again, like I said to you guys, because this is my very first, like, proper job in the industry, I was so touched. I was like, why me?” 

“And so it was really cool to get to work with someone who had been in the industry for, like, 15 plus years, and we would just be working on it together to just fix it. I felt very trusted.” 

Annemarie’s Parting Advice for Students

“The last thing I want to point out is to watch out for fear and negative thoughts about your skills and your self-worth.” 

“Know that they’re negative thoughts, and any negative thoughts that come up are not true. Essentially, they’re things to hold you back or keep you safe. That’s how your mind works. It would rather you not take the next step forward, because you’ve never done it before, and there’s no data there. But who’s to say just because there’s no data, you can’t be successful?”

“So I would say, notice those thoughts and know that they are just there, but you don’t have to do anything with those.” 

Let’s raise another (virtual) round of applause for our wonderful guest speaker, Annemarie Gereis. This was an evening that will live on in our students’ memories, just as Annemarie’s moments meeting her heroes live on in hers. 

If you missed this MasterTalk, but want to be the first to know about our next event, then you can follow us on social media, or sign up for our events mailing list. 

Watch an Interview with Annemarie