VFX: Cause and Effect

Screen International

With the exchange rate in their favour, the UK's visual effects houses have never been in greater demand. But how is the sector coping as Brexit looms and investment heads East?

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Not only are British facilities routinely nominated for major awards they regularly compete with each other for the prize. Last season, D-Neg and Milk took home the best visual effects Oscar for Ex Machina, fending off Cinesite and ILM (London-HQ for Star Wars). Most buzz in the category this year is around Disney’s The Jungle Book, for which MPC completed 85% of the work, Doctor Strange (where Framestore played a large hand) and Fantastic Beasts for which every sizeable UK shop contributed shots. Not all the work on these projects was completed in London, however. The biggest houses farm work to offices in different territories dependent on where studios want to locate postproduction to maximise financial incentives. Framestore, MPC, Cinesite, for example, operate substantial divisions in Montreal which attracts postproduction with a whopping 41% tax subsidy. D-Neg and Cinesite also share shots with subsidiaries in Vancouver. Portions of The Jungle Book were routed to MPC’s Bangalore wing. “The scale, complexity and profile of work was unprecedented for us,” says CEO Mark Benson. “It will become a reference point for photoreal characters and sets.” Nor are these facilities necessarily British. MPC is owned by French group Technicolor, D-Neg by India’s Prime Focus and Framestore recently exchanged a controlling stake owned by Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund for Shanghai-listed Cultural Investment Holdings. Not that this necessarily matters - the heart of the creative operation tends to remain in London - but it serves to highlight the global nature of the VFX industry where facilities require offices in different time zones to operate round the clock. It’s also symptomatic of a business which is increasingly looking East. “Twenty years ago this was a North America focussed industry,” says Framestore CEO William Sargent. “Studios which then extended into Europe and Australia now think of themselves as truly global content producers. South East Asia is a significant and growing part of the market so we are just doing what our customers are doing and positioning the business for the next twenty years.” Indian or Chinese companies already own large US facilities Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain while producers based there are beginning to spend money with UK firms to obtain higher production values. Cinesite and Milk and Framestore are all working on Chinese features. The visual effect business also relies heavily on globe-trotting freelance talent.  “The quality of work the UK produces is a function of the multi-cultural influence of our talent,” says Benson. Forty percent of MPC’s London staff are non-UK nationals. “Any change in our ability to engage with talent on a global basis could represent an issue. As an industry it is important we make that crystal clear.” This post-Brexit concern reverberates across town. “UK facilities are staffed with many Europeans, particularly in animation, and if any kind of restriction is placed on being able to work here it would have a big impact on our ability,” says VFX supervisor Tim Burke.  “The talent pool will shrink enormously if that’s the case,” says Adam Gascoyne, co-founder, Union FX. “For a small to mid-sized company like us the costs of sorting out visas just adds another layer of difficulty.” At the same time, Canada is introducing legislation to cut red tape and make it even easier for VFX companies to recruit high-skilled foreign workers. Milk CEO Will Cohen believes that the creative industries as a whole should be voicing more alarm: “I would urge everybody to send a message to the government about the harm any new labour laws could do to the booming creative industries.” In October, trade body UK Screen merged with Animation UK to make a more forceful representation to the government. “We need to employ the best of the best because we’re working on the best of the best,” says Neil Hatton, CEO, UK Screen Alliance. “The UK needs to do more to cultivate home-grown talent schooled in art and science.” While the exact deal with the EU remains the main cause for uncertainty, the devalued pound has pushed even more US investment toward UK shores. Studios can buy VFX expertise 20-30% cheaper than before the vote. “The reality is that VFX across London is more vibrant than ever,” reports Cohen. “We’re not all trying to leap on the same thing and cut each other’s throats to get it. We’re all busy.” Cohen says Milk bid for projects almost every day of the year - a far cry from the unpredictable norm. This could be the cumulative effect of wider recognition for a facility which followed up its Oscar with a BAFTA for BBC show Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and an Emmy for Sherlock. “We are working with a Hollywood VFX supervisor on their first major TV series and having to talk them through the challenge of handling 4K,” says Cohen. “In areas like this TV VFX is technologically ahead of features [where 2K is standard].” Not only is high end drama, fuelled by HBO, Netflix and Amazon, creatively more ambitious, the budgets are rising too.  “Framestore has a very strong heritage in TV having won 14 Emmys so effectively we’re going back to our roots,” says Sargent of the company’s decision to return to TV. It’s first new job was on National Geographic’s Mars. “The high end TV market is beginning to get the budget and ambition we are dealing with in film.”  Like Milk, Union FX divides its work between features and TV (Bridget Jones’s Baby, Outlander, Mars). “We’ve seen a big increase in the amount of TV work without actively chasing it,” reports Gascoyne. “TV surpasses film in some cases in terms of ambition. Certainly the expectation of audiences is higher.” Technicolor performs most of its TV VFX out of Mr X in Toronto but bolstered its UK drama presence by partnering with boutique Munky in October. It is Virtual Reality (VR), though, which the group is betting will drive business. It invested millions of dollars in a R&D center in Culver City which divisions like MPC can tap into. “There’s a fantastic opportunity to take assets from film or TV and repurpose them in immersive environments,” says Benson. MPC’s VR projects include The Martian. “The [R&D center] enables us to be at the forefront of delivering the tools and forging new storytelling methods. We’ve only scratched the surface of what the medium will enable.” Milk is on the verge of revealing its first VR project - one that could lead to several more, says Cohen: “There are no standards, format wars are looming and the potential audience with headsets is currently limited but we see VR as something very exciting to be involved in.” Framestore runs a dedicated VR studio but Sargent is pragmatic about its prospects. “VR is going to be slower than everyone is assuming. It’s not cheap, it’s time consuming, the only commissions are from marketing departments and without an audience it’s difficult to get a return on investment.” Cinesite is eschewing VR to focus on animation. It is working on several productions, both as an animation service provider and also developing its own property. A slate deal with 3QU Media will see the release of its first collaboration, Charming, next Spring; Gnome Alone, also for 3QU, is currently in production. A partnership with SPA Studios has produced the holiday season feature Klaus. “We are trying to get an animated feature off the ground in London,” reveals MD Antony Hunt. “I envisage growth not just in VFX but as a media company.” Cinesite is arguably the largest independently owned VFX house in the world. Since a private equity-backed management buyout from Kodak in 2013, it has expanded into Canada to build animation and take on features work including Captain America: Civil War and Independence Day: Resurgence. “The Chinese keep knocking on our door but we’re happy to continue to grow organically,” he adds. Upcoming UK VFX projects MPC: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Disney); Ghost in the Shell (Paramount); The Dark Tower (Columbia); Alien: Covenant (Fox); Blade Runner 2049 (Columbia/Warner Bros.) Cinesite: Robin Hood: Origins (Lionsgate); Mary Poppins (Disney); Logan (Fox); Power Rangers (Lionsgate), The Commuter (StudioCanal). TV - Black Sails series 4 (Starz); American Gods (Starz) D-Neg: Blade Runner 2049; Annihilation (Paramount); Dunkirk (Warner Bros); Fast 8 (Universal); Cure for Wellness (Fox); Baby Driver (TriStar); Pacific Rim: Maelstrom (Warner Bros); Wonder Woman (Warner Bros); Life (Columbia); Justice League Part One (Warner Bros) Framestore: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (Disney); Paddington 2 (StudioCanal), Beauty and the Beast (Disney) Milk: TV - Doctor Who series 10 (BBC), Sherlock series 4 (BBC), Decline and Fall (BBC) Union FX: T2 Trainspotting (TriStar Pictures); Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Fox Searchlight); My Cousin Rachel (Fox Searchlight); The Snowman (Universal); Victoria and Abdul (Focus Features)