Engineering and Film Double major?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

Hello! I’m a Junior in High School who wants to major in engineering at Texas A&M. But recently I’ve gotten very interested TAMU’s Visualization Major. I want to get 1 degree in Visualization and 1 in engineering. I talked to admissions and they said that I could be an “unofficial” double major (take the requirements for the first semester as if i’m an actual major) and then minor in it. But I think I would like more.

With a minor (if i start freshman year) I can take some graduate computer engineering class that will count toward a Masters in Visualization. That way if I get a masters it would only take 2 and a half (fall to summer 1) semesters to complete it.

I almost forgot the reasoning!!

I want both degrees so that I could have the portfolio and the Aggie network supporting me to do either. (more then 90% of Visualization graduates get a job offer after college) The reason I want to do either (or the reason I want to know if I should test the waters) is because I’ve always liked the technical problem solving that came with engineering and I’ve always like to produce(mostly post production) films.

I would like my job to be somewhat creative. I don’t want to have the same job like a toy maker. I would like different challenges throughout a work year in order to create several projects. What I like most about engineering and visualization is the different projects I get to face and the problems I get to solve.

My ideal career takes some time
My Ideal career would be to start off as a part time (if necessary, full time) film post production worker (preferably editor or color corrector) and a full time material engineer (preferably in the designing department, but I’m still open to other forms of engineering) for the first 3-5 years of my career in order to establish film and engineering contacts, experience, and a strong portfolio for either to choose so I can support the next phase of my career.

After that point, I will try to be a Professional engineer and work as a mechanical or material engineer (or find another field of engineering that I like) while being a freelance post production specialist (working as an editor, music composer, animator, color corrector…) in my free time.

What do you recommend, a BS in engineering with a minor of Visualization(4 years) even though it can’t help me earn a job, or a BS of Mechanical Engineering with a MS / MFA in visualization(5 years). Or should i drop the Visualization altogether? Or maybe a double major(5 1/2 years)?

2

Do the ME or other area of engineering you are interested in and decide if u have room for electives you can take some of the Visualization classes.

If you are really interested in Visualization, then you more likely should major in CS which has more overlap since all of that type of design/film work is computer generated.

ME can have design but ME overlaps with Industrial design as a creative outlet. The objects designed ultimately are real products, not just ones that appear on a screen

3

I think that as a junior in college you are poorly positioned to make this detailed a decision. Engineering majors are hard all on their own, and double majoring is usually a pretty bad idea - it takes away from your performance in your “main” major, whichever that is, and unless you can actually find a job that benefits from both skill sets then you are spending all that effort for no professional benefit. And those jobs are pretty rare.

I know a lot of engineers and a few artists, including a professional cinematographer who does a lot of the things you want to do in film. Both are full-time endeavors with sharp demands on your schedule. I think it likely that you will need to choose one or the other at any given time, but you could (for example) start off in engineering and then use a masters degree in film to transition into that field should you so desire.

So I would suggest that you major in engineering, and that while you are doing so you investigate film, taking whatever courses you can take without compromising your performance in engineering - if that leads to a minor or major, great, but it doesn’t need to. If and when you decide that film is what you really want to do, go back for the master’s degree. That will refresh and expand your training and give you current contacts in that industry.

But don’t expect to do both professionally at the same time.

4

@Lakemom
I did consider computer science. But their is surpisingly more cross over between mechanical engineering then computer science. (Mechanical Engineering has one graphics course, but computer science has none that transfer, weird right? :-/ ) Because of the credits that I’m bringing in and the strict course requirements, I’m only taking about 10-12 hours at a time so i need to increase the amount to a full time student for money purposes anyways, and since most students do 17-18 hours I should be fine adding an extra 3-6 hours per semester right?

@cosmicfish
Sorry I didn’t specify, i’m a high school junior. When I get to college I’m gonna join an engineering and film making team. So I should have time to know if I really like film making and engineering at the same time

Question, when you say its hard to find professional benefit to both, does that mean visualization would not be appealing to an engineering design job?

Another question, I pictured my career post college to be like this

1-2 years > 1-4 years > Future
Full time Animator / Editor > Freelance Animator / Editor > Freelance film maker
Part time engineering technician > Full time Design Engineer > Professional Engineer

At A&M they have a 95% job placement rate for visualization. So I wanted to shortly work full time to build up contacts and an strong portfolio before freelancing. Is this idea impossible? or with great difficulty? Because I’ve been told getting my “foot though the door” as a freelancer would be the hardest thing to do while being an engineer.

5

Might be difficult to get an engineering job if you haven’t touched engineering in four years. How will employers know your knowledge is still up-to-date?

6

This is the curriculum for ME at Texas A& M and it is pretty full. Perhaps you can minor in Visualization but you have a bunch of core requirements to do. The graphics course in ME is CAD. It would be something like Pro Engineer or Solidworks. It is not graphics like Photoshop or another film editing type of course.

http://engineering.tamu.edu/mechanical/academics/degrees/undergraduate/bs

***To be selected from the University Core Curriculum: Of the 18 hours shown as University Core Curriculum electives, 3 must be from visual and performing arts, 3 from social and behavioral sciences, 6 from U.S. history, and 6 from POLS 206 and POLS 207. The required 6 hours from international and cultural diversity may be met by courses satisfying the creative arts, social and behavioral sciences, and the political science and history requirements if they are also on the approved list of international and cultural diversity courses.

Perhaps you should see where else in the country they do this Visualization degree because I actually have never heard of it. Human Computer Interaction Design is a upcoming major I have heard of and it blends well with CS.

7

I am still not 100% certain what “visualization” is, but it appears to be some variation of graphic arts, yes? In all but the very smallest of companies (which have no choice), artistic and engineering work are separated - they require full-time dedication and there are extremely few who can put in a 100% effort on both simultaneously. If you go the art/visualization route then they are going to want you to do that for a good chunk of their product line, perhaps all of it, and the same goes for engineering. Jumping back and forth is at best inefficient and is at worst a great way to overwork your staff while producing terrible product.

I see no problem with you becoming a full-time animator or editor right out of school if your coursework supports it, one of my high school classmates went that route (not at TAMU) and is now working on his first feature film! However I don’t see you working as a part-time engineering technician at all - technicians don’t generally have engineering degrees, companies rarely want part-timers as engineers or technicians, and neither commitment is going to be conducive to the other activity.

As far as being a freelancer, realize that this requires taking 100% of your time and making it available to your customers. You might need to have a meeting in another state at a moment’s notice, or drop everything to go take some photographs that you will base your animation on, or be waiting to edit everything together in order to meet a deadline. I know a guy who does this, and it took everything he has and then some to get to the point where he could have a social life, and you want to add this to a whole additional career. What employer is going to let you work around a side business, especially one so demanding? And what customers are you going to find in the film industry that are going to work around your being chained to a desk 40+ hours a week?

Also realize that employers are not generally friendly to people who bounce between jobs, much less industries. It takes a few years of training to make a new engineer profitable, why would they spend that time on someone who is likely just biding time until their film career takes off. And likewise, if you go full time as an engineer, why would other filmmakers want to risk working with you when you seem to lack dedication to the field?

The only way I see this path happen is if you are independently wealthy. If you are so blessed then none of what I said matters because you can pay people to accommodate your needs. But if you are the one getting paid then that dynamic gets reversed, and there are only so many people whom you can accommodate.

Each one of these is hard. Nothing is impossible, but I would wager that if you took a hundred people who went this route, perhaps one would achieve decent success in both fields while the vast majority spent a ton of time to be worse than mediocre at both.

Not trying to be mean, but you have laid out an unrealistic course.

8

@lakemom

I’ve completed dual credit for all of the core curriculum courses, that is why i have some free space. And when you add how i’m doing community college one summer, and studying abroad for credit in one summer, about 2 - 3 classes drop each semester (except for junior year). That is where the free space is from. But what I ment earlier was in visuailzation, they have “Directed design electives” and one of them is engineering graphics, the course that is required for mechanical engineers.

If I did do visualization, I would only do it at A&M because of the 95% placement and the fact that it is not just an animation / film degree, it is a degree that lets the user be a better communicate, designer, and technology specialist. They teach you to “program your own” (don’t know what it means) “animation making software” with special computer classes made only for students in the College of architecture so its students can work on any software. But TAMU’s Computer Science is designed so that if the student wants they can minor in visualization and take graduate courses their senior year in it. same thing vise versa.

I believe their are only 3-4 in the country (6 if you count a Canadian schools) and they are heavily recruited by Pixar, Dream works, ReelFX etc.

9

@bodangles
What do you mean “haven’t touched it in 4 years”? I might have made a misunderstanding. I would work in as an animator for 1-2 years at most to earn the contacts while working part time as a technician. then on my 2nd year of employment, I would leave to work as a full time engineer.

Is it bad to work part time as a technician? Would I be stuck working as one forever if I stay that long? And is 2 years too long to not work as a full time engineer?

10

If they are heavily recruited by Pixar, Dream Works etc then you should have no trouble finding an Alumni to talk to. Contact one of them and find out exactly what all they are doing and what they needed to know.

Teaching you to program on your own is not the same as being a programmer. You will not be able to use programming as a back up career. There are only so many movies/video game jobs out there.

11

@lakemom wait, no I haven’t completed the philosophy credit yet. But I’ll just do that co enrolled with Engineering Ethcis

12

Being a programmer?

“Teaching you to program on your own is not the same as being a programmer. You will not be able to use programming as a back up career. There are only so many movies/video game jobs out there.”

Could you explain a bit more

13

I don’t quite understand what that means

14

@lessonwitch2 . Find an alumni to talk to before you get started. Honesty, schools alway say “Our Graduates are hired by the most amazing companies…” That may not be so.

I had a friend, a programmer, who worked for Lucas Films over 30 years ago in the dark ages :slight_smile: Computer science is your back up degree to that field you are interested in. Not ME.

What I mean about being able to program means being able to dabble in writing very specific computer programs is NOT being a computer programmer. It is very limited.

Like being a bookkeeper is NOT like being an Accountant. Being a meter maid is NOT like being a Police officer.

15

Oh but I do plan on visiting the school this summer so I can talk to the current students. Perhaps I can arrange to meet some alumni. Should i try to contact them(like professional email) or let the visualization department do it?

I have absolutely no idea what “program on your own” means yet. I haven’t though too much about it yet. The only program I use is blender right now for animation. And they are normally quick ones for my short films, so i didn’t think about what animation software a company would use.

<slightly off="" topics:="" and="" if="" i="" ever="" wanted="" to="" be="" a="" programmer="" couldn’t="" just="" learn="" with="" masters?="">

16

Meeting current students is good but you really want to meet alumni who have gone out and gotten jobs with the very expensive degree you just finished. So contact the main office for the major ask to get names of those who have graduated and are working. Google them on Linked in so you can see what they are currently doing as a job and what other jobs they had to get to the one they are doing.

You would email them with a short description of your interest in this major and maybe 3 questions.

Such as

  1. Are you satified that this degree provided you with the base to perform your current job and seek others if you wanted to?
  2. What do wish you had known or did differently now that you are out of school?
  3. Would you recommend this major to someone like me? Please tell me why or why not.

Yes, you could go back and get a Masters to learn to be a programmer. That is an option.

17

@Lakemom

I’ll leave this link to anyone who wants to find it https://viz.arch.tamu.edu/people/former-students/
Thanks alot, I hadn’t considered asking an alumni!!

@cosmicfish

Now i have alot of questions

Graphic design, is part of it (it is a pretty broad degree. It ranges from animating a Disney movie, to designing a life sized robot that moves the way you move)

I know few engineers who do full time engineering while running a part time business (and one who runs a church). What do you mean by “full dedication”? In Dallas Texas (where i’m assuming their is a surplus of engineers) I see that some of them work part time out of college, but are told they will move up to full time positions after some time. Some were about 6 months while some went to 3 years. And nearly all the college graduates I know who did Co Ops and had a job waiting for them told their employer they would start part time, but would be okay working over time to about 30 hours. I was hoping to find a job like that, and I see job listings like that. Is that not a practical job goal to reach? For being a part time engineering technician for 1-2 years? Becuase worse case senerio, couldn’t I just wait one year after my degree, work for one year as an animator, and then work a full time engineering job? Becuase don’t alot of college graduates work different jobs for about 1-2 years before getting a job in their major?

Now I’m concerned about your comment on freelance film making. I freelance film make in high school, and I’ve (surprisingly) never had a conflict with it while being a full honors (3.5 gpa) student and working a full time job with over time. When I say freelance I mean me and 1 vollenteer from my film department, and together we write, shoot, and edit and it takes at most 5 weeks for a 2 minute project. I normally shoot for one day, then spend 1-2 hours editing 3 other days of the week the footage I just shot, before I shoot again the next week. But I don’t know how it will be if I freelance animate. What makes it different while being an engineer?

I would DEFIANTLY not take an out of area job while doing this plan. I was thinking only short films, commercials, and maybe freelance animating for what ever company I was working for originally. And I would only do a few projects a year (since i don’t need to do it for money, since my main career will pay well)

Isn’t freelancing just like moonlighting? I though it was fine to moonlight as long as it is in 2 completely separate fields and I show full time energy to the employers. I would hope that if my engineering employer sees the A&M degree with the one year of Co Op experience and list of successful projects completed on an engineering team, they would assume engineering is my main career and film making is a hobby.

In my film program 3/4 of our alumni work a 2nd job full time with over time and still have a good local film careers and families. If thats how the film industry is in dallas, I think will take what I can get. . I would be very happy living their kind of life. I don’t care about being big and famous or making feature films, I just enjoy the process of making a film.

Review of questions

  • Are these part time engineering technician jobs I'm seeing very temporary?
  • Aren't I overqualified to be a technician (since I'll have a BS instead of an AS along with a year of work experience?)
  • Don't all college graduates start our working some job not related to their career? Like fast food?
  • Will my bosses think I'm waiting for my "big film break" if I have alot of qualifications to be an actual engineer? Like engineering experience, or a degree from a top tier school,or my portfolio of completed engineering projects
  • Whats the difference between being a full time student with a full time job while freelance film making, and working as a full time engineer while only freelance editing / animating?
18

@lessonwitch2 I just googled 3 names on your link and they all have masters degree in Visualization. That means that having a BA in this major may not get you far.

Nathan Bowden
Blizzard Entertainment
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/nate-bowden-42640b1

Dane Bettis Rhythm & Hues Studios
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/danebettis

Matthew Brunner
Airtight Games
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/matt-brunner-8a99611

19

Thank you so much for all of your input!!

@Lakemom
Aw I see your point. so do you think it would be best for a BS in engineering and a MS in visualization?

Becuase I just got a response from the adviser of visualization and they said if I complete the minor I might be able to doe graduate courses to fast track the MS.

So the BS in engineering and MS in Visualization is the best path? What other advise would you give me to purseing this BS-MS plan?

20

You email with the alumni. Some of those names are linked to their email address. I think the ones that are red. See what all they say. Perhaps one will talk with you on the phone.

What I think is you want a BS degree that is your fall back. Be it in ME or CS. One of those alumni was an architect before he did the program. You want to know people’s path to help plan yours.