SET- UP | VFX LOCKDOWN
FROM DARKROOM TO SPARE ROOM We speak to three visual effects companies to see how they’re navigating this new reality of remote working A s the world responds to the coronavirus pandemic and the WORDS CHELSEA FEARNLEY
set up for remote access to ensure that each artist would be able to work remotely should a lockdown happen.” With this preparation, Giannini was also able to re-evaluate Freefolk’s remote software solution and try out new ones. “We decided to switch to HP RGS and, within a couple of weeks, our pipeline team had configured and rolled it out across the whole company. The only issue we had was with the broadband connections that our artists had at home, which we can only influence up to a certain point. But we were lucky that we were able to foresee what was coming, which gave our artists plenty of time to upgrade their plans.” THE HOME SET-UP Companies like Vine FX and Coffee & TV were already familiar with the concept of remote working. Vine FX had been moving around, operating out of various cutting rooms in London, as well as setting up
entertainment industry is forced to stop production on shows and films, post-production houses are still finding ways to keep the wheels turning. Freefolk, a visual effects company based in Soho, was working on the second series of Netflix’s Cursed when the lockdown came into effect. Thankfully, the company was set up to work on it remotely, with key hardware and infrastructures already in place. The managing director, Vittorio Giannini, explains: “We already had a VPN, firewall and fibre, because we need to remote access the system on occasion for client deliveries and technical issues, which is done by our technical staff. Our artists are also quite geeky, so they themselves already had some really great kit at home. Three weeks prior to the PM’s announcement, we decided to extend the disciplines that were
on-set at Leavesden Studios for the Harry Potter film franchise, before settling in Cambridge in 2016. Its founder, Michael Illingworth, says: “While working on Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts , I found a great team of artists who I didn’t want to part with when we moved to Cambridge. They were based in London, Greece, Bulgaria and Australia, so I tried to find a way to retain those members of staff, and still give them the same experience as working in our new office. We invested heavily in Teradici PCoIP technology, which enabled us to place all of our artist workstations into our data centre. This made for a pleasant and quiet working environment, but it also allowed our remote artists to have a direct connection to our systems, so there was no need to upload/download material for them to work on. It’s a smooth working set-up and a stroke of luck that we had it up and running well before the coronavirus crisis.” Coffee & TV started out as a remote working company back in 2012. Its founder, Derek Moore, says: “The idea was not to create a big post-production monster, but make a flexible, well-connected, remote- The communication part of remote working has been the biggest challenge
06 DEF I N I T ION | JUNE 2020
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