U.K. Showcase Spotlights VFX

Click here for an article about a recent showcase in Los Angeles featuring the Soho (London, UK) studios. It is interesting that the article ends on a rather down note.

"Thanks to tax incentives and a wave of young talent, London has become a major global vfx player, and there’s a very collaborative environment in Soho, since they all must divide the work. However, there is a feeling among some that the current vfx boom may not last much longer, what with the low exchange rate and new requirements that U.S. productions be shot in the U.K. to take full advantage of the tax breaks."

This seems to be the consensus feeling from where I am sitting. Even though the total workforce in Soho still only represents a fraction of the American work force in visual effects, the boom in work here has breathed great life into British post production. However, eyes are now turning to the problem of perpetuating the phenomenon in a more stable form. The tremendous growth in the feature film visual effects business in London over the past five years (mirrored by the growth of The Moving Picture Company where I work which did not even have a feature film department five years ago) has been largely due to a handful of factors. First of all there is the financial incentive. The bean counters in Hollywood were simply able to make the numbers work well here because the lower bids, combined with the tax breaks (in the form of a lease-buy-back scheme) made a lot of sense. Especially when the studios cast aside their previous English eccentric appeal and not only adopted a more American style visual effects development pipeline, but actually pursued and catered to the needs of American producers as clients. At times, producers and supervisors have told me that this simply meant visual effects supervisors and producers "using certain catch phrases" and "lingo" familiar to the American clients with the sole purpose of making them feel at ease. It was key to have these clients "feel as though they were getting the same process as in the Untied States" and therefore the same end result from the Soho studios as they would in America. The reality is that I think that the work in such films as the Harry Potter franchise have somehow benefited from a more European perspective, and "feel English" as a result. Never mind that some of the more impressive work was completed as usual at ILM and SPI. What remains to be seen is how the trimming of the financial incentive, with greater restrictions on what kind of projects are eligible, and the ever increasing rates operators have been charging in an environment starving for legitimate talent, will transform the landscape in post production. Will the Harry Potter franchise continue to pulse along as the life-line for feature film visual effects production in England?