A visual effects studio in California is giving artists with autism a chance to work on Hollywood's biggest blockbusters

Patrick Brady is only 26 years old, but his IMDb page already reads like that of a Hollywood veteran.

Brady has worked on hits like "American Hustle," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "Captain America: Civil War," and "X-Men: Apocalypse," among many other projects.

Beside each credit is the studio that made it all possible: Exceptional Minds.

Based out of Sherman Oaks, California, Exceptional Minds is the world's only vocational school and animation studio that gives people with autism spectrum disorder a chance to learn animation and visual effects and put them to use in big-budget Hollywood films.

The artists work on a range of post-production tasks. They do rotoscoping, camera stabilization, green screen work, and 2D animation. If an overhead microphone or rogue wire creeps into the shot, EM artists will make it magically disappear.

Susan Zwerman, EM's executive director, says the school helps a segment of the population that typically struggles to find meaningful work reach their full potential. According to the CDC, roughly one in 68 children is diagnosed with autism today.

"This type of work is really good for someone with autism," Zwerman tells Business Insider.

Similar to how large technology companies have hired autistic employees to tap into their attention for detail in computer programming, Zwerman says a laser-like focus also comes in handy when you need to adjust individual frames of a movie.

"They're really into the pixels, in terms of the rotoscoping," she says, referring to a technique of overlaying two pieces of footage on top of one another. "They zoom in, and they really want to fix it to the Nth degree."

Exceptional Minds' school was founded in 2009 by Yudi Bennett and Mollie Burns Keith. In 2011, it welcomed an inaugural class of just nine students. By 2015, it had opened its own in-house studio to supplement the school. Today, EM actually has to turn away two out of every three applicants due to limited funding.

Zwerman says that many of the students find EM through their parents, who want them to pursue their creative interests as much as possible. That has been a central mission at the school since the beginning, as an estimated 90% of people with ASD are unemployed or underemployed.

"My mom was really struggling to find a good place for me to do animation," Brady tells Business Insider.

Nico Arredondo, a junior artist, had a similar story. Originally from Argentina, Arredondo hopped around a few countries before his parents found Exceptional Minds. He graduated this past June and already has a credit for doing visual effects work on the Benedict Cumberbatch-led film, "Doctor Strange."

Every EM student goes on to work in the studio and each of the studio's 10 artists was once an EM student, Zwerman says. The integration makes it extremely convenient to help artists develop their careers. After spending three years learning the basics, graduates spend one year as a junior artist before working as a senior artist.

Bringing new work in is Zwerman's job. A veteran visual effects producer, she acts as the middle man between the production studio or the visual effects company hired by the studio to match EM artists to the project.

Zwerman says many of the EM students end up becoming friends and having social lives outside the studio. It's a small, tight-knit bunch. In addition to the 10 graduates, there are 33 full-time students. Many stay late for movie nights and hang out at one another's houses.

"It feels like I have my own life," Arredondo says. "I have a job, and I'm practicing to get better and getting ready to work outside for any studio."