With more than 21 years of working as VFX Supervisor (Tippet Studio – 1989 – 1997, PDI Dreamworks – 1997- 1999, Weta Digital 1999-2003, MPC – 2003 to today) on some of the most significant VFX Films from Hollywood and Globally, MPC Senior VFX Supervisor Adam Valdez delivered a gem of a keynote at the NASSCOM Animation & Gaming conclave 2010. Using the example of the MPC approach, the keynote stressed upon a perspective, philosophy and practices that can be imbibed by studios that want to go to the next level.
“This keynote is about MPC as a new global offer, as a case study for seamless international expansion, of how India is taken seriously and the need of a global offer.” began Valdez. “We are a company that has made a major investment through our parent Technicolor in India. We are not the very first company to come to India, there have been many that have done so before us, but I think we are doing a good job as well.”
Playing the MPC current showreel (Which was stunning), Adam shared that some of the films that MPC completed working on in the last 6-7 months included, Clash of the Titans, RobinHood, Harry Potter 7, Suckerpunch and Narnia. Adam had personally worked on Narnia where MPC worked on 700 shots and he showcased a trailer of the film as well”
“The seamlessness idea is significant one for this film cause our offices in London , Vancouver and Bangalore were seamlessly and interestedly involved on in this film” he shared.
“Why is MPC becoming a global company? What‘s going on that dictates this? – Animation and VFX is growing everywhere and content everywhere involves a lot of CGI and VFX that may or may not be visible. There is a new volume that needs to be created .It also means more shots, higher complexity, higher visual bar, faster and cheaper. The volume is going up and we are being depended upon much more. Having to do things faster has implications on all parts of the studio, right from how you specialize, how you set the pipeline, how do you improve upon the baseline of operations. They not only expect us to know what we are doing no matter what we do and they want us to typically advise from right in the beginning. We are being taken up very seriously.
Tax situations and financing are drivers of where films are made globally. We have a unique offer at MPC with our locations at Vancouver and London which are favorable tax locations. Another new factor is competitors for the same work from all over the world.
So we need to make money, we want to produce great work, we need to add value to a project, the idea that vfx is a service business is antiquated, we need to add creative value. We want directors to enjoy working with us.. We also need to attract and reward talent.
Our new approach to this is a global offer. A creative culture turned into trainable methods. “To cultivate talent globally wherever we operate with a systematic workflow.” The other nice thing about having multiple sites is that the sites can support each other when there are volume peaks and valleys. It also helps to have support technologies, there is an awful lot of investment into technologies that support synchronization of pipelines, tools and workflows. Seamlessness to the client, we don‘t want the client to think about this.
Ultimately the goal is one team of artists working around the world on one or two projects at a time, creating quality and new paradigms.
So now MPC is a global open house for film makers and artists. We want to be an extension of the film maker‘s team. We have evolved to a disciplined, departmentalized workforce with technological processes underneath. The big point is MPC is work in progress and we are constantly evolving, we are agile.
London MPC – currently 450 people in the film group (VFX ARTISTS, Software Developers and Post and Production) and 150 people in advertising (VFX Artists and Production) . 10 years ago the film department was 10 people and in 2 years it came to 150 and now we are a 1000 people worldwide.
Some of our Guiding Principles
– The film comes first.
– Collaboration means accommodating a Director‘s process
– We are proud geeks. We love technology
– Technology can never replace talent
One can never undermine the value of individual talent.
– We make scenes not shots. We have an animation attitude to all scenes. (There is a bad habit in the VFX community globally where they think in terms of shots that need to be completed.) We think of it as a moment from a film. It needs to cut well, it needs to feel right, it needs to tell the story.
Methodology is the key thing at MPC. Laying down an inverted pyramid diagram he showed
#You have talent, tools, pipelines —
#then you have project management and people structure
#Film Making sensibilities
When you combine all of these things, you should be able to say what your methodology is to deal with these things.
Timeline of interaction with the client
1. Brief -‘
2. Breakdrown -‘ Key Shot Foundation‘ Scene Foundation
In Parallel – Design ‘Lighting Setup -‘ Action Beats -‘ Key Shot look -‘ Action Finalling.
The interaction timeline with the client includes
Brief, breakdown, next during the design, show him some of the action and blocking, next share the look of some of the key shots, next we need to lock the edit and to stop changing. And then they will see the shots and scenes for comp comments and then they will see the finals.
Pipeline for me is not automation. Pipeline equals repeatability. What we do is an iterative process that evolves week after week. If the pipeline is not designed in a way to facilitate workflow and evolve the artist and make him improve in what he does. Its about taking a workflow and making it more visible. Pipeline is an ongoing thing.
Valdez then showcased scenes and shots that utilized the power of several in house developed tools at MPC including Crowd Simulation, Fur and Hair Simulation, City Building.
The Creative Offer at MPC
We work with directors are full creative partners in all facets of production
– Concept
– Pre viz Scene Design
– Character Design
– Fx
– Strive to continually improve story during post production
The Culture and People
This is a super important aspect. A creative culture means daily critique. Making the artist feel that every single day they are responsible for creating some work and the critique in front of others to motivate, direct and improve the effort gone into creating. You are constantly trying to ensure that the artist team moves into the real world and draws from the world not just looking at other films and animation.
MPC Intranet. Documentation and training a super important thing to evolve the artist.
Obviously, Talent and Culture is = People. I always tell that the best thing about my job is the people I work with. You might work on a crappy movie one day and a great movie the next. But the people you work with define the culture that you participate in.