VFX
CLOUD AND REMOTE WORKING
players tend to have more resources. All acknowledge though that there is more to the human resources side of remote working than setting up a couple of Slack channels and letting staff get on with it (see box, this page). “One of the areas that’s particularly difficult is onboarding new artists,”
says Tim Chauncey, Chief Technology Officer, Outpost, whose UK and Mumbai teams recently wrapped on 250 mostly remote shots on The Man Who Fell to Earth for SHOWTIME. “Enabling someone who is completely remote who has never been in the office, or even physically met the people they’re working with, that provides its own difficulties. We’re looking to build in efficiencies and integrate new technologies to help really drive the growth of the business, but we don’t want to lose sight of the daily requirements of our artists. We want to provide the best working experience we possibly can – whether that’s in studio or remotely.” Graham Bird, Founding Partner, Black Kite Studios, estimates that 70%
of the company’s talent is still working in remote locations at any one time, even with restrictions currently absent. “Overall I know the team have really enjoyed being back in the studio,
and for many being there for the first time,” he says. “It’s been wonderful seeing everyone firing off each other’s creative energies, but it’s also important to retain the flexibility, to allow people to work remotely as required, as everyone is different with a unique personal situation that influences their personal working requirements. “Embrace the needs of your talent and create a flexible working
environment that enables your talent to flourish and succeed,” he advises. “Embrace the difference.” This is an important point. Jellyfish’s Bristowe points out that the
global VFX industry needs to find 10,000 employees to fulfil all its future requirements. Historically in times of skills shortages, the balance of power tends to swing towards employees, and survey after survey in the wider IT industry suggests that job seekers are prioritising the work/life balance and hybrid working environments in particular. Fail to offer what Gen Z employees in particular demand, and they will go elsewhere. But while there is no Rees-Moggian desire to chain people back to
their workstations, there is an acknowledgement that there has been something missing. Framestore’s Killick contrasts the importance of reading the room versus reading the Zoom, and how teams may not pick up on an artist or production coordinator being stressed or distracted if they have their cameras off in a large group project Zoom call. There is also an important life stage component to the whole conversation too, and how the needs of vfx artists change with the passing decades. “There’s a balance to be struck between senior artists who are
benefiting from the extra family time and junior artists who need access to the best people so they can learn and hone their own skills,” she says. “For people at the beginning of their career, they need to be physically around the best in the business, seeing how their peers approach challenges, and getting the sort of immediate or anecdotal feedback that you might not get on a Zoom call or in a virtual daily. Our hybrid approach aims to balance both of these needs, and we’re in the process of putting together an ambitious new mentorship programme that will help strengthen our training and education endeavours even further.”
THE GLOBAL STAGE Perhaps one of the most profound changes though, and the one that might have the most far-reaching consequences, is the death of geography. 25 years after Robert Zemeckis’ Contact broke the mould by employing multiple vfx studios around the world, remote workforces accessing cloud compute services can now compete on a truly global scale. “Having access to a global artist community enables us to work across time zones and deliver large scale and highly complex vfx work within
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ZOOM WITH A VIEW Keeping teams connected remains a challenge that cannot just be solved by throwing technology at staff. While tools have proliferated, with Slack, Zoom and their ilk now ubiquitous, their true effectiveness lies in how they are used. In many respects, it has
always been thus. “Back in the day you’d find companies having once a week beer o’clock, or once a month pizza nights; but none of that necessarily glues a company together,” says Jellyfish’s Bristowe. “There’s no magic potion. It’s about communication and making sure that anybody, wherever they are, is directly communicated with, has access to their leads, their supervisors, HR, and so on.” Increasingly there is realisation
that a mix of comms channels is required that lets remote workers adapt according to their circumstances. Daire Byrne, Global Head of Systems at DNEG, lists
at least eight different methods of connection the company uses, from email to specific collaboration rooms, most of which were used to complete its work on The Matrix Resurrections fully remotely. “Certainly for important
meetings, we tend to use multiple forms of communication, i.e. video call and written notes, or presentations with slides and speakers with regular breakout rooms to engage in follow up conversations,” he says. “Some of our departments have been working whilst having Zoom rooms in the BG, that the department can jump in and out of depending on what they are doing. There can be periods of time where nothing is said, but music is just playing in the background. Others where people can have group conversations, and connect whilst working. This proved to be a surprising success in helping build a solid bond for these teams.”
compressed schedules, without ever having to compromise on the quality of visual output,” says Bird. “On Instacart for Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Reset Content we created a sequence flying through a full 3D city. The vfx schedule was relatively tight but the core 3D team at Black Kite was complemented by specialist environmental FX talent who were able to work across time zones to create an amazing end result.” “10 years ago there were only five or six studios that could work on
a certain calibre of film and that was because they had the sheer raw firepower in their basement to push stuff out,” says Bristowe. “Now the landscape has changed. We can render whatever you want as long as the production budget can pay for it.” The question then becomes how to prevent a race to the bottom. If
companies can move rendering around the world to cheaper locations, in a truly distributed workplace what is to prevent them recruiting employees from countries with cheaper labour costs in a global marketplace or, moving up the chain, what is to prevent studios looking to work exclusively with VFX houses based in emerging economies? “Expertise, specialisations, and pipelines designed to handle bigger
workflows; the special sauce of companies that can handle the data and resources to do a Lion King or Jungle Book or the artists that can complete the work to the standards required,” says Danskin. “People will make the difference. You can race to the bottom right now. There are VFX companies across the globe, but people still end up at the same shops and places that have the right talent and the right technologies that allow them to complete the 2500+ shots and sequences on a major feature with the quality required time and time again.” It seems that, whether working in a facility or in a spare bedroom, as
ever it is the people that count. Connecting them together and managing those connections is therefore going to be the key task for the next decade.
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