Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

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It takes a brave soul to launch a new VFX facility given the meltdown at one of the industry’s largest, but creative entrepreneurs conversant with cloud economics are confident that there are good opportunities to be grasped.

UK startup Enginelab is the latest of a new breed of postproduction company designed around facilities in the cloud and powered by AI.

Two of its three founders come from Untold Studios which broke ground in 2018 establishing the world's first cloud-native creative studio with a template of cloud render nodes and virtual workstations.

Sam Reid was CTO of the initial Untold team helping grow the company from a handful of employees to several hundred bringing international business to its creative services from commercial brands, pop artists, studios and streamers.

“I've learned a thing or two about how to how to work in the cloud and how to how to make the cloud work for media and entertainment,” says Reid. “We're cautiously optimistic that increased volumes of work are coming back into the market and that new studios are going to pop up that will need next generation technology, solutions and workflows to support them.”

Describing Enginelab as a full-service independent technology business he adds, “We don't need edit suites. We not going to be hiring artists. We're going to be providing the infrastructure for studio businesses and we’re going to be the technology experts they can call upon for guidance and leadership.”

Joining Reid in the venture is colleague and senior developer from Untold Daniel Goller; and Matt Herman who founded roto and paint shop Trace VFX before selling it to Technicolor in 2016.  Subsequently, Herman took animation and visual effects outfit Psyop from multiple on-prem studios to a fully cloud and remote operation, expanding the business by opening lightweight facilities in Mexico City, Berlin and Hamburg.

“Because we have [set up facilities] once before we should be able to do it again but a lot quicker,” Reid says. “We’re also going to use AI to help us do that.”

Specifically, Enginelab will use AI to automate processes. “AI helps with technical manipulation, the really boring, mundane jobs that an artist would have to do so they can focus more on their craft,” Reid explains. “I’ve have spent a lot of time at Untold evangelising and implementing AI workflows. Now I’m keen to unlock efficiencies in workflows for other businesses. For example, AI can write code a lot more efficiently and a lot better too.”

It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the recent collapse of Technicolor is end of the line for post models with volumes of real estate, thousands of employed staff and huge overheads. It is being replaced by leaner organisations where infrastructure is for hire to be tailored per project and scaled up or down as required.

“It's all very well shutting everything down and minimising spend, but you need to be able to quickly kick it back into motion when you get a big project that needs lots of render nodes, for example,” Reid says. “You also have to be comfortable doing it, because it’s one thing knowing you can do it, but you need to have the team around you who know how to do that properly so you don't end up with huge bills and in situations you find it very difficult to get out of.”

In his obituary to Technicolor, Michael Elson, COO at MPC from 1998 to 2008, said The Mill was “founded by visionaries and powered by super talent, ravished by neglect”. MPC, he said, was “killed by a management so adrift it’s criminal”. Of Technicolor itself Elson concluded, “A corporate behemoth was never equipped to deal [with] a world that requires you to be light on your feet and adaptable.”

Reid and Herman are alumni of The Mill, both starting out their careers there in the engineering departments. They are wary of not making the same mistakes as its parent.

“It’s about staying lean and not falling into a trap of huge overheads by being able to adapt to dips in work,” Reid says. “Cloud technology helps with that because you can be very in control of the costs.”

He adds, “I really enjoyed working at The Mill and it’s sad to see what's happened to it. It's where I fell in love with technology. One thing I’ve learned is that when our backs are against the wall everyone bands together. You can see it happening right now. We're having some really interesting conversations with people about setting up new studios and hopefully we'll be able to help them.

“The future is definitely much less about having a physical presence and owning kit. The facilities are disposable to be honest.

“People are the assets and always have been in this industry. We need to protect them because they are the ones that drive value.”

Enginelab are optimistic that the industry as a whole has turned a corner on the last few years of Covid, strikes and economic downturn.  It has its eye too on the 29.25% tax credit for UK VFX that comes into effect on 1 April 2025 (and is backdated for activity after Jan 1 2025). It probably won't receive Royal Assent until late March.

“There zero chance it will fail at this point,” Neil Hatton, CEO, UK Screen Alliance tells IBC365. “HMRC, however, won't issue guidance until it's written in law and there are signs that this is causing some clients to hang back on commitment until they are 100% certain of what is claimable.”

Reid highlights the increasing global and transient nature of the workforce and shifts in locating productions to soak up different tax benefits.

“We hope to see a lot more studios come to the UK especially for films and HETV work. The key to success in 2025 is being able to work with pockets of people around the world. Our challenge is how to make it a seamless and frictionless process.”

They aspire to emulate the business model of Untold which spans longform as much as shortform work.

“With a longform project you are looking at many months to potentially years of work, so things like managing the data  become a lot more of a challenge and more of a focus point. Advertising can be started and finished within a few weeks. The challenge here is to be very efficient and render shots quickly.

“We should be able to set up a very secure environment for creatives to focus on what they do best while we make the technology work really hard for them. Those artists could be in Boston or Cape Town as equally as they might be north of London.”

Having established a relationship with AWS at Untold, Reid says it starts as Enginelab’s preferred cloud provider. “If a customer wants to use a different cloud provider then we'll be agnostic. I'm not a cloud salesman, I'm a technologist. We want to work with businesses to craft them the best technology solution that could be in the cloud or it could be on prem or it could be both.”

“If it was a full cloud environment with render, storage and workstations there for maximum efficiency we can also help businesses work together. If more people use the same platform we can create some smart automations and ways of sharing data.

“For example, a big feature film might want to engage us to host their data and we would securely serve data and functionalities out to different vendors on that show. Certainly, there will be a power in numbers if everyone is using the same infrastructure.”