[FRAMED]: Chen Davies, Research & Development Software Engineer
[FRAMED] exists to shine light on Framestore’s most fascinating cast of characters: its people. Presented with a probing list of questions and a demandingly short deadline, this feature puts the hopes, dreams, and desktops of our MVPs on the digital wall, for all to see. Welcome to [FRAMED].
Name: Chen Davies
Title: Research & Development Software Engineer
What are you guilty of?
Never finding enough time to exercise & letting my children watch TV while I desperately need to get on with the cooking or house cleaning!
What was your last brush with danger?
Killing a scary black house spider on my own (without using a hoover)
Ghastly! Your last brush with greatness?
Building our own house from the ground up with my husband!
That is very cool. And your worst character fault?
Trying to do too much at once!
Your most shining quality?
Perseverance and juggling
You’re on the run from the law, where are you headed?
Somewhere warm, sunny with great food and scenery!
Sounds fabulous! Who’s your partner-in-crime?
My two little ones (we are great with skipping the bed-time routines when daddy is not home!)
Fantasy cellmate?
Your greatest achievement?
Giving birth to, and being a mother of my two beautiful children
Most valuable skill?
All the survival skills as a super hard-core commuter. I have managed a daily commute of 4 hours in the past 6 years! That equals to travelling around the earth’s equator twice each year for over 12 times in total!
Commuter QUEEN 👸. Go on, share some more humblebrags:
- I can cook 3–4 main meals and make 10 sandwiches in 2 hours when I am batch cooking!
- I once chased (in a van) the person who picked up my lost iPhone, tracked them to a pub, a restaurant and shops following the Find my iPhone locator, and eventually forced the person to hand in my phone to a local phone shop by setting off the alarm on the iPhone to expose where she is when I was within a 300 meters radius! (very exciting indeed, almost like a police chase sequence!)
Super sleuth 🕵️ Name your pet peeve?
People talking loudly on public transport, especially in the quiet carriage
Commuters parking all over my village yet the train station car park is less than ½ full
PREACH. Now, let’s talk about the day job. What would your DREAM project entail?
- A great team
- Challenging and fulfilling end goals
- Lots of cakes and sweets to share
Your career highlight to date:
Working at Framestore and using my R&D skills to develop lighting, environment, effects, crowd, and core tools for the making of many awesome movies! I am really proud to be part of the amazing team behind the Oscar and Bafta-winning Gravity.
This week I learnt that:
The lighting in the lift areas have funky red and green colours!
We’ve gone full-on Christmas here at FS! What’s your current view?
A white wall with lots of interesting drawings on it including NO in many different languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and binary code!
Give us a desk tour
A stack of notebooks, a couple of books (“C++ Coding Standard” and “Effective C++”), a variety of crackers and oat biscuits, peanut butter, honey, and a pack of cleaning wipes
What do you need to work, on the daily?
Coding IDE (integrated development environment) such as qtcreator and eclipse
Maya
Nuke
Git (for source code control)
Jira and Redmine
Framestore is, to you, in three words:
Dream comes true
YES THEY DO ✨ Best thing about your work environment?
Working with cool people on cool projects!
Framestore is great at:
The world class talent, and the amazing projects
What’s your favourite artform?
Traditional Chinese paintings
Favourite image?
So cute! Fictional character you’d like to hang with?
Oh, I will have to think about this one…
We’ll allow it! Happiness looks like:
Wake up naturally without the alarm clock and have 1 hour of ME time each day
If not here, then where?
Home sweet home!
What do you think of too often?
Yummy food, nice holiday, and finding more free time
And not enough?
Where I last put my phone and keys!
Couldn’t live without:
My evernote app and Google calendar to keep track of everything
If you ruled the world:
I hope I can make the world a paradise filled with happiness and hope!
