A well-oiled Machine takes off: started by two Cinesite London vets, this Soho-based VFX house cut its teeth on the third Harry Potter film

Post, July, 2004 by Bob Pank

According to a recent UK Film Council report, the UK's post production sector for TV and film amounts to $2.6 billion a year, serves customers across the globe and is growing. It ranks with the US as one of the top providers of visual effects for the film industry, and UK post is regarded as innovative and an early adopter of new technology. So much for the flag waving, but hear this: in two years, post's share of all production budget spending has grown from 13 to 25 percent.

So, following years of great change, are new and better times ahead? Clearly some think so as a new post house has appeared in London's Soho. Machine (www.machinefx.co.uk) opened its doors in December last year and has, until recently, been buried in film effects work on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Machine is run by two highly-regarded names in the visual effects industry: John Lockwood and Steve Street. They gave up their positions as department heads, respectively, of 2D and 3D at London's Cinesite. Their credits includes Band of Brothers, all three Harry Potter movies, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and The World is Not Enough.

The new company will focus on delivering digital visual effects for motion pictures as well as high-end TV spots and broadcast. Street points out, "Together we have a tremendous amount of specialist and complementary expertise that we want to use in our own way. Opening Machine gives us the freedom to do this. It will provide a high-quality resource for even the most complex visual effects."

The motives for the set-up are as different as they are refreshing. Lockwood puts it in a nutshell: "We want not only to do fantastic work but also to have fun at the same time." Seeing that large company overheads, organization and legacy methodology can be a drag, they want to keep small enough to avoid large administration and keep a fresh, agile approach to their work. Lockwood continues, "This means keeping the company size down. We could look at doing a major movie but we're also happy to do 'chunks' of it--as we did for Harry Potter III. Then we hired in freelance talent to swell the numbers to 10."

Street recalls, "It was frustrating, we were so new and we had to turn work away. We had plans to expand with more key people to beef up the core team but there was no time for this then." At the moment the team does include producer Amy Robson, who has five years experience in visual effects for film, commercials, music videos and TV.

The ground rules of Machine's working practice are clearly set in the founders' minds. Lockwood puts it this way: "We really do not want to overpace ourselves with work because we must always do a good job. Quality is key and, knowing that this is the way we work is a real comfort factor to our clients. There are no worries that it's not going to happen. We will not just say 'yes' to every shot and then find out later it's far more complex than we thought. We've both been doing lots of bidding at other places and we know what will work and where the pitfalls are."

THE TOOLS

While fully equipped, willing and able to perform high-end spots and TV work, there is a special affection for film. This fits with the desire to allow time to do the job properly rather than being rushed by a looming deadline. It also has enabled them to equip quite economically with powerful PC-based workstations (mostly with single P4 Xeon processors), some Mac G5s and PC renderfarms running RenderMan rather than acquiring the fast and expensive "hero" systems more associated with TV-based work. They see a problem where you have one operator fully occupying one expensive machine costing as much as 10 PC workstations. The workflow is not so favorable when that system has to spend time rendering. It becomes a liability. Street sums it up saying, "Film post is primarily about people, and then about kit. Commercials are first about kit," Machine's toolkit includes Apple Shake and Discreet Combustion for compositing, Alias Maya for 3D and CineSpace for color grading.

THE WORK

Despite the big effort, their 21 shots for Harry Potter fell nicely into the plan to work on a high-profile film, make a fantastic job of it and prove to everyone that Machine can achieve at this level on its own. Lockwood emphasizes its importance, "It was absolutely crucial to us personally, and for Machine's future success, that we delivered more than was necessary on the project and that it ran smoothly for the clients. Happily it all paid off. Our first major production was complete and everyone was happy--particularly us."

Since then, work has mainly involved independent features, including the German full-length feature Sergeant Pepper, Street admits, "We like doing indies. We get more involved and make more of a difference. Often, post is at the back of their minds until after the shoot. We try to encourage them to speak to us before the shoot, otherwise they can miss out on the potential improvements and savings."

By BOB PANK

bob.pank@virgin.net