Lighting Lead - Temp Contract - Montreal

Company Description

Repeatedly voted one of Montreal’s Top Employers and Employer of the Year for the 2022 Mercuriades Awards, Rodeo FX is a high-end creative company offering services in visual effects, advertising, animation, and experiential.

Nominated for multiple Emmy® Awards for its work on the series Stranger Things season 4, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power, the independent, Oscar®-winning company boasts close to 800 artists crafting from studios in Montreal, Québec City, Toronto, Los Angeles and Paris.

Rodeo FX is a creative partner to the world’s best storytellers including Netflix, HBO, Disney, Marvel, Amazon Studios, Warner Bros. and Sony, and has collaborated on ads for YouTube, NBC and Apple. Current projects include Dune: Prophecy, Silo Season 2 and Sonic 3. Recently released projects include The Rings of Power Season 2*, Venom: The Last Dance,* Taika Waitit's Time Bandits, and House of the Dragon Season 2.

Work arrangements:

As an artist-founded and artist-led company, creativity is at the heart of everything we do. Our mission is to give our talent the freedom, resources, and environment they need to produce high-quality work and thrive in a stimulating, collaborative, and supportive setting.

With this in mind, employees are expected to work from the studio at least three days per week. The remaining days may be worked under flexible arrangements, when the nature of the role, production needs, and work organization allow. This balance helps us support collaboration, preserve our studio culture, and encourage the in-person exchanges that are essential to the way we create.

Job Description

The Lead Lighting Artist plays a pivotal role in delivering the artistic and technical quality of renders handed off to compositing. As a reference within the team, they guide fellow artists in their day-to-day work while continuing to deliver complex shots autonomously, rigorously, and at a high standard. Working closely with supervision, production, and other departments, they support the project’s vision, maintain clear communication, resolve technical challenges, mentor team members, and contribute to continuous improvement across tools and workflows.

Key Responsibilities:

Creative Quality

• Translate visual direction into compelling lighting adapted to the narrative and visual style.
• Collaborate with CG, Lighting, and Compositing Supervisors to maintain artistic consistency.
• Guide artists toward simple, effective solutions during dailies or briefings.
• Add creative value through relevant visual adjustments or artistic variations.

Technical Quality

• Ensure render continuity across sequences and deliver clean, optimized outputs.
• Identify and fix or flag technical issues related to shading, caches, or setups.
• Contribute to the creation, testing, and documentation of tools or templates in Houdini.
• Document project specifics clearly in a wiki for team reference.

Leadership & Communication

• Lead team briefings, share relevant information, and maintain smooth communication with production.
• Provide constructive and supportive feedback during dailies or one-on-one sessions.
• Monitor the team’s workload and flag any imbalance to Production.
• Participate in turnovers, mid-project evaluations, and post mortems with structured input.

Departmental Support

• Mentor junior artists, identify development needs, and support their growth.
• Assist in onboarding new team members through practical training or mentorship.
• Collaborate with the Department HOD to identify recurring training or tooling needs.
• Help structure annual reviews by sharing thoughtful assessments of team members’ performance.

Optimization

• Improve lighting setups, reduce scene weight, and optimize render performance.
• Identify pipeline stages where time or quality can be gained.
• Flag tool or script needs to the Pipeline team and assist in validation.
• Test new approaches or technologies for future implementation.

Qualifications

• 3 to 5 years of experience in leading a lighting team within a VFX environment.
• Advanced proficiency in Houdini and working knowledge of render engines like Karma and Arnold.
• Strong understanding of CG/compositing workflows and color pipeline considerations.
• Solid knowledge of Universal Scene Description.
• ShotGrid knowledge for task tracking and information sharing.
• Positive, natural leadership, with the ability to guide and support a team calmly under pressure.
• Proven ability to train, document, and contribute to sustainable technical solutions.
• Assets: template creation, internal documentation, Python scripting, lookdev familiarity.

Additional Information

• * 3 days on site
• * April 6th to July 3rd.

Diversity : At Rodeo FX, diversity is a core value. We’re committed to creating an inclusive, equitable workplace where different perspectives are embraced. Every team member brings unique insight that strengthens our creativity, challenges our thinking, and helps us deliver better work.

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