For a complete 'apprenticeship' then I would argue that the people who say "go out and do it" are correct. the trick with most special effects - even the stuff you do at home for home movies - needs to be designed and shot with the special effect in mind. In this way the final shot you have in mind is designed properly. Anything else fits into the category of "Oh, I'll fix that in post production".

Certainly, if you can find a class or course on the subject then enroll in that. To get a flavour of the subject you cna do a lot worse than (and as I only know this particular tool I make no apologies for making this recommendation for th eumpteenth time) grab a copy of the 'Meyer' Motion Graphics in Afetr Affects books (Vols 1 and 2), download a 30 day trial of AE and work through it. Source footage for the exmaples is provided on disk along with step by step recipes for achieving the effects.

Having said that for large hollywood production I'm not sure that Afetr Effects is the compositor of choice so you might be better off finding the equivalent volumes for other tools. However, the techniques are the same if not the interface.

But open thing I have gleamed from "my sources" is that working in special effects in large hollywood productions is not nearly as glamourous as you might think. You could quite literally spend months at a time just drawing lines around actors just to frame-by-frame mask them from the background which need replacing.

Anyway, that's my 2p on the subject.

Alan

One of those things that for me is great fun as a hobby but if it became a full time job would surely lose its flavour quite quickly on that sort of scale.

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