shots 159: V is for VFX

Visual effects are the modern magic. Whether  they are dancing M&Ms or dinosaurs in your living room, the past 25 years of advertising could not have happened without the boom in visual effects technology, specifically CGI. Neal Romanek talked with representatives from the world’s top visual effects houses to hear about that 25-year journey, what we might learn from it and where VFX could be going next

Reanimating a deceased Audrey Hepburn may be all in a day’s work for today’s masters of VFX but how do you reanimate that wow factor when clients have seen it all? The experts reveal how to still find the dazzle in the perfect blend of tech and creativity, how non-CGI practical effects are making a comeback and the blurring of the lines between agency, production and post…   

“Jeez, that’s cool!”

Framestore’s Jon Collins always wanted to become a director. But in 1980s London he found a home in post production, eventually becoming one of London’s first post production producers. “It was an exciting time,” he remembers, “Music videos were exciting and technology was emerging. Stuff like Quantel’s Mirage was coming out; I remember seeing it used on Saturday Live with Ben Elton. They’d wrap the screen into a saxophone, and I thought: “Jeez, that’s cool.” He joined Framestore almost 20 years ago as head of production, and is now the company’s president of integrated advertising, worldwide. He remembers a landmark Framestore ad, St George, for Blackcurrant Tango: “On the surface it looked pretty straightforward. There’s a guy in an office on the sixth floor and he’s talking and the camera’s tracking with him in one continuous shot. The punchline is he ends up on a boxing ring on the white cliffs of Dover, and it’s all one seamless shot. “I used to take that around to people – particularly to the States – on the showreel. People would see it and go, ‘Ok, so?’ But then when they understood it, they wanted to see it again and again. It was so cleverly done that people almost didn’t get it. It was the right mix of technology and creativity, and that’s what we still go after for just about any project we do.”

That same question of how to impress a client is even more on Collins’ mind two decades later, when dazzling visual effects are taken for granted. “For all sorts of reasons, most people have seen more or less everything. We did a Galaxy chocolate spot with Audrey Hepburn in it. It was a CG head replacement, but very few people I showed the spot to knew how we did it – including people in the VFX industry. I feel that was a landmark for us. Most of the time, most people are pretty visually sophisticated. They’ve seen a lot of stuff and it’s hard to impress people. And I’m not even sure most clients have the budgets to spend to impress people in that kind of way. We’ve [recently] seen more of a move to docudrama or comedy spots.”

Looking to the future, Collins isn’t sure that the 30-second spot of old will have the pride of place it has enjoyed for a generation. “I’m not sure, in the traditional 30-second form, that there’ll be the same kind of breakthroughs that there were in the past 25 years. But it doesn’t mean that the ideas won’t be strong or creative.”

Like now, but with jetpacks!

“Artists were operators, FX shots were called ‘opticals’, pens and pallets were knobs and levers and the predicted retirement age was 35,” says Neil Davies, ECD of The Mill, remembering his start in visual effects 24 years ago.

He has seen big changes over the course of his years in the effects industry, but believes that core principles never change. “At The Mill we have moved away from being simply the technical execution guys at the end of the process to becoming creative partners working hand-in-hand with the agency and director. We have always wanted to help tell the story in the most engaging, cinematic way possible.”

Through changing technologies and economic shifts, Davies has learned that the core lessons are always creative ones. “I’ve learned that you don’t just do what’s asked of you,” he says, “you need to contribute creatively at each stage in the process so you can be part of shaping the ad to be the best it can be on every level. Storytelling goes hand in hand with the technical aspects of VFX, and it’s becoming increasingly important that artists get involved in the early stages of a project to evolve and enhance the story.”

Davies believes that the future will see more falling away of traditional boundaries. “I think we’re already moving away from the clear-cut divisions we had 25 years ago. The lines between agency, production and post will continue to blur.” He does note that cycles do repeat. Asked about the current romanticism surrounding a return to celluloid by big-name directors and the celebration of the employment of practical effects in the new Mad Max and Star Wars films he says, “Like anything, fashions come and go. Shooting film on anamorphic lenses is a current trend but once that reaches saturation point the backlash will begin and we’ll all be yearning for the golden days of digital. As we’ve all discovered, 25 years goes very quickly so maybe it won’t be quite as different as we might imagine. Like now, but with jetpacks!”

Craft and experience

Alex Lovejoy, creative director at MPC New York, started as a runner in a small company called Triangle, part of Saatchi. He moved to MPC, working in the tape room, eventually working his way up to being a junior compositor. “There was a lot of watching over people’s shoulders to find out what they were doing on these odd machines called Henry and Flame,” he recalls, and he still finds the continuously evolving technologies a source of inspiration. “To me the really fun thing about this industry is that it’s constantly changing, and there are always new bits of kit arriving. It keeps the industry fresh and exciting.”

Lovejoy notes that most of the entrants into the industry now go through a very different route from him. “Now there are quite a few academies and schools for learning CG and compositing software. And that’s where MPC looks to hire our junior artists. They’ve had two or four years’ experience learning all this. When I started there weren’t any schools where you could learn the software, because it was too cost-prohibitive.”

Though training can allow new artists to slot into work quickly, Lovejoy thinks there are some benefits to the old way of doing things. “I still think that if you join as a runner, for example, you get to experience all areas of the company, and that gives you a better viewpoint in terms of what you find interesting and where you want to go.”

Justin Brukman, MD of MPC New York, seconds his colleague’s admiration for the skills of the past. “People were still faxing scripts around when I started. And that really wasn’t long ago. I feel that there was a lot more focus on craft and experience at that time. You couldn’t teach someone how to process 35mm film in a week. It took years of apprenticeship and experience to be trusted to handle what was essentially millions of dollars of investment on a piece of film. There was a lot more to get to grips with on the craft side of things. I caught the very tail end of when you still had technology as a USP for what you were doing in the VFX world. You were still able to say, ‘We have 12 Infernos and the people across the road only have three.’ You had specific hardware – and that gave you an advantage. But now it’s a software game.”

From exploration to industry

Pioneering Parisian VFX house BUF Compagnie has adhered to a rigidly artist-centred vision since it was founded in 1984 by its CEO Pierre Buffin. The company, now with offices in Europe and North America and a film development wing, worked from the beginning with its own proprietary software and a workflow which shunned assembly lines and saw individual artists working on shots from conception to delivery. Buffin believes that in a world of increasing time pressure and greater corporate control some worthwhile elements of the past have been left behind. “We have moved from exploration to industry. It’s much more industrial now,” he muses.

It’s not surprising that Buffin should treasure the company’s artistic roots. BUF grew up alongside visionary talents such as Michel Gondry, David Fincher, Marc Caro and John-Pierre Jeunet, and the Wachowskis (the company helped develop the ‘bullet time’ slow-motion effect used in the Matrix films). He looks back at those times with affection: “I think now we are in a difficult time. There are fewer risks taken. In the 90s it was more fun, creative, more open to new ideas. Today it’s very strong still, but if a client is doing a commercial, they want to see the reference first. It wasn’t the same 15 years ago. It was: ‘We think you can do it. Go ahead.’”

One of the company’s early hit commercials was O&M Paris’ 1990 Perrier ad, Lion, directed by Jean-Paul Goude, which saw a young woman going face-to-face with a lion. The effects are seamless and dramatic and could easily have come out of a commercial from last year. Ironically, Buffin doesn’t see technology as a major creative influence. “For me a computer is very practical. It’s like a tool, or a brush. It’s not important. What’s important is the art you put into it.” He also looks with some skepticism on the growth of visual effects “assembly lines” – big houses with many pairs of hands at their disposal, but a narrow creative vision.

“When you are in a company of 2,000 people doing visual effects – running all the time – there is no place for artists in that kind of industry.”

The enduring role of the good eye

Giles Cheetham, lead Flame artist at Electric Theatre Collective, has been in the VFX industry for 20 years and has been a Flame artist for most of that time. But when he started out, Flame was the new kid on the block. Quantel’s Harry and Henry were the industry’s workhorse compositing tools. “When I started in 1995, there was a top ten set of companies and they were all of a big size because you needed a lot of money to buy the kit. It was half a million quid to buy a Flame. It’s a fifth of that now.” He sees the democratisation of technology allowing a host of new entrants onto the scene, such as Electric Theatre Collective. “Now you’ve got the big three companies, with huge staff. They’re owned by banks or big corporate companies. And then all the rest are independent, smaller companies. I think that’s been quite a change. In the last five years with the price point coming down, it’s viable for self-funded, creative bands of brothers to get together and start a small visual effects company.”

Cheetham echoes the same sentiments as many of his colleagues – that craft and skill are the most important things, as they always have been: “Technology only gets you so far. Experience, hard graft and a good eye are the final 10 per cent. And that’s the difference between good visual effects and great visual effects. And that’s always been the case.”