[10/25/25] working at corridor

in mid september i got an email that just had to be be spam. an invite to temp-work at corridor? can't fool me. nice try. but - it's from an @corridordigital address... and I had just left a live-chat comment on the corridorcast - that niko did 'fanboy' over (no way to make this sound humble - his words not mine)...



well it turns out it was very real. the offer went something like this: "we're trying to wrap up a lot of projects all at once and could use some help. if you happen to live in los angeles we do have an open desk - but remote works too." now, i don't live in los angeles. however when i responded, i did not mention that. my mind was set - i'm going in person. i only kinda-sorta believe in fate, but this moment did feel special in a way.

after only like 2 back-and-forths i told them my plan:

1. no i don't live in los angeles
2. yes i do want to come anways
3. cya on monday

while this was obviously the right choice there was one major hangup. there was this other project - a much more important one. as you'll read in the next post i was gearing up to get married in early october (the offer was for the last weeks in september). on top of that i was making a surprise (vfx heavy) short for the wedding. luckily my fiance (now wife) said that going was non-negotiable. there is probably a world where i pussed out - so thank you wife!

what i ended up helping with is their scale of wealth video. tons of tracking. tons of visualizations. and because i insisted, lots of geonodes. many of the shots ended up having some of these nodegroups slapped on. also i got to try blender's early physics branch to create spawning rigid bodies.

the whole thing was a really jam-packed experience. too long for me to be motivated to exhuastively write about. however, here are 4 snippets:

1) at the end of my first (or second?) day i was waiting for my waymo - not uber - remember this is california - and wren left at about the same time. i told him how surreal it was to already know the layout of the studio from the videos. see these people - that i already know stuff about - in person. childhood hero stuff. he told me when he joined a decade ago he went through the exact same thing.

2) i came to work a bit early and jan nearly gave me a heart-attack with his surprise nerf sting. it was then that i learned about 'the game'. you are only 'in' once you shoot somebody. but after that, there is no 'out'. on my last day i joined the game.

3) we're all vfx'ing and sam walks into the studio. he tells us all to stand in a semi-circle, shoulder to shoulder. he gets down on the floor and starts measuring the gap between our feet. like we were getting fitted for a suit. turned out this measurement was for the game table in son of a dungeon.

4) the scale of wealth video is almost completed. just some fixes and an audio scream pass is needed. a scream pass means we all go into the podcast-space and yell like hyenas. i got to yell like a hyena.