Testimonials
The passion and talent at Lost Boys Studios | School of Visual Effects is evident from day one and makes the experience vital and lasting. Here are some words from past students, industry colleagues, guest speakers and employers.
I appreciate a school who teaches the student, like you guys do at Lost Boys, to be production ready with some production “sense.” I find a majority of schools don’t know how to accomplish this. Your students would be welcome at SPIN anytime you think they are ready as I have been consistently impressed with your grads. Good work!Doug Campbell, PresidentSpin West VFX
The work being produced by Lost Boys under the guidance of Mark Bénard is top notch. This is some of the best Visual Effects that I’ve seen coming out of a school in a long time.Tina Ouellette, Executive ProducerGlobal Mechanic Media Inc
Mark Bénard and I have worked together many times over the past 15 years, so when an opportunity came to speak to the students at Lost Boys I was there. The school’s in a great location, the students were very tight and co operative, and seemed like a social group. I think my talk at Lost Boys was the longest I ever did, the student’s asked intelligent questions so I was happy to spend the entire day with them. They understood all of the basic and most advanced concepts and had great artistic flare in their work, by far one of the best groups I’ve spoken to.John Gadjecki, VFX Supervisor
Lost Boys provides exactly the kind of curriculum the VFX industry needs; project-based studies that incorporate all aspects of today’s digital pipeline. The students are extremely fortunate to have in Mark Bénard a real, experienced VFX supervisor at the helm of the program, and we know that graduates from Lost Boys will be able to hit the ground running.Adam Stern, VFX SupervisorArtifex Studios
Having worked for Mark Bénard at Lost Boys Studios, I was interested to see how he would impart his vast vfx wisdom at his school of visual effects. After seeing the program in action and meeting the students, I can see why their grads are snapped up so quickly — they are truly given the training they need to hit the ground running in production.Eric Petey, Digital ArtistDigital Domain
I’m impressed to hear about the real-world compositing; visual effects problems being posed to the students at Lost Boys. We’ve seen very few curriculum’s, in the US or Canada, which offer students a chance to be challenged by such realistic production problems. We’re eager to work with the new the budding stars that are heading toward graduation.Rob Taylor, Founder/Creative DirectorPendulum Studios
I recently had the privilege of giving a short lecture to the Lost Boys students, I also reviewed their demo reels which are very impressive. The class size is small and production based, the equipment is high end. The problems are real world and the instruction is from a proven professional in Mark Bénard, supplemented by industry speakers. The focus seems to be on getting each student production ready, and the demo reels reflected this.Scott Dewis, Founder/Creative DirectorRace Rocks Digital Inc
It’s good to see a real production artist teaching the things that should be taught.Aruna Inversin, Digital CompositorDigital Domain
This is a great new direction for Lost Boys. Anyone who’s lucky enough to get training like this would truly have an edge on the competition.Trevor Adams, VFX Technical Director/SupervisorLeviathan Studios
One of the things that I have most appreciated about my time under Mark Bénard’s leadership was how well they prepared me for dealing with this industry. Not only were all of the projects and instruction extremely helpful, the way Lost Boys runs their studio is very similar to the studios that I’ve worked in so far, so the transition was much more seamless for me than it was for a lot of the other junior artists that I spoke to who had no idea what to expect, weren’t given good tools for managing their workflow, and were not used to receiving criticism on their work. I feel that Lost Boys not only gave me the instruction and tools to create a great demo reel, but they prepared me very well for actually getting and keeping a job in this business.Jennie Bates, Digital Compositor, Lost Boys GraduateStargate Digital
