[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.

Thank you for the experience Corridor :)