Here in England, it would be seen as work experience....which is done for free and you would get to work on stuff and learn from it (that I guess is seen as the reward). Companies are under no obligation to pay students or people on work experience, I think thats pretty common practice in most parts of the world.

But theres always catch 22......and Im summising here....

'Joe Intern' goes into said company and works his butt off for free as he would be eager to impress, but gets to work on a cool movie and therefore gets to put some neat stuff on his showreel, albeit comp, modelling and so on. Now his time is up and he must leave, but he has all that stuff on a reel and can look for a job elsewhere...not so, he applies left right and centre for a job and gets nowhere....why?....simply because a studio can turn around and say well we dont need him/her because new 'Joe Intern' thats working for us now is doing it for free.


But, the upside is that if the intern guy or work experience dude who worked for free proves his mettle while doing the job, chances are that he'll be asked to stay and actually get paid. Granted he'll start at the bottom of the ladder but shit, he got in there because he was good. Studios are good like that when it comes to staff they value, they wont let them go.

With regard to Pros doing a good job and getting it done and juniors doing less...not so. When I worked on John Carter I was a mid level modeler, and I did some get to do good models and also some mediocre background ones, its part and parcel of the job. But what opened my eyes to the industry in a big way, that I was actually asked by a producer from a recommendation of a supervising modeller on another show to fix models created by senior and lead modellers....I was shocked at what I was seeing. It made me ask who deemed / how the person above me actually got into that position in the first place. Alot of you would be mortified it was just laughable. One guy actually recieved a full A4 paper from me with all the redos he needed to do (he was a senior too) So my point is you prove yourself valuable and you will get ahead, just do it right and you wont ever be used.

Jay