FEATURE | PRODUCT ION BOOM
is a role for everyone, regardless of their background, experience or qualifications in film and television. We hope that by opening up our studio doors to young people, we are giving them a better understanding of the range of roles that are available. Ultimately, our Open Doors event is a step to finding an exciting career.” THE NEED FOR AUTOMATION Apart from the skills shortage, there is also the matter of managing the amount of content that needs to travel through the production process. Zak Tucker from Harbor Picture Company, which has UK studios, sees automation as an answer to this: “The sheer scale of demand for premium content creation is mandating really intuitive automation for appropriate post-production processes, coupled with quite high-touch bespoke human QC, intervention and customisation,” he explains. “That’s why we don’t see it as a particular service of a particular technology, but more of an approach that couples automation where it’s appropriate, with humans overseeing it. “You still have custom workflows, so not everything is a cookie-cutter result. AI will be part of the toolset, but I’m also talking about all sorts of other coding and scripting that can take processes that we normally do by hand on a daily basis, and automating them. The demand for premium content creation has gone through the roof and there is literally not enough people and expertise to achieve it at that level if you don’t automate. The speed of turnaround will not be possible. “One example would be around VFX pulls, for instance, and retrieval automations. Especially on larger VFX features and episodics, you can automate the pull process, which has been done to some extent already, but also automate the delivery back to the post house from
RIGHT Netflix’s lavish new movie, The Two Popes, stars Anthony Hopkins (left) and Jonathan Price (right) graded by Technicolor in London
The sheer scale of demand for premium content creation is mandating really intuitive automation Republic of Ireland, which was a 3.7% increase on 2017 and worth £1.387 billion at the box office. Film and high-end television production spend in the UK was over £3.1 billion – that split into £1.173 billion for high-end TV production, a 4% increase, with film production reaching £1.1924, the second highest level on record. Three of 2018’s top five grossing films at the UK box office were made right here in the UK – Avengers: Infinity War (£70.8 million), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (£65.5 million) and Bohemian Rhapsody (£52 million). Of the 202 feature films that went into production in 2018, 131 were domestic UK films with a total interim spend of £295.3
the VFX vendors and the offline suites, maintaining colour pipelines and metadata integrity so you can iterate and reiterate and deliver on time. “We’ve have already implemented parts of this with our own coders and R&D sections. We can automate the pull process with our own process for delivery to the vendors, we’re really focused now on retrieval from them. Also auto-conforming and auto-updating on offline suites, along with exposing the pull system to our clients so that we can get out of the way as well. Our clients can then do 24/7 pulls and retrieval without human intervention, except for the skilled human QC elements, troubleshooting and customisation.” THE GOOD NUMBERS The BFI is on the edge of publishing its UK production report for 2019, so we are referring to their previous substantial analysis of how the UK did in this sector in 2018. It’s still great reading for those who work in the industry. The top-line notes are 177 million cinema admissions for the UK and the
CURRENT AND FUTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENT PROGRAMMES IN UK FACI LITI ES
FACILITY
INVESTMENT (£M)
Shepperton Studios, Surrey Pentland Studios, Scotland
500 140 120
Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire Littlewoods Studios, Liverpool Church Fenton Studios, Yorkshire Belfast Harbour Studios, Northern Ireland
30
21
20 14
Space Project, Manchester Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire
4.5
Warner Bros Studios, Leavesden, Hertfordshire
Unstated Unstated
Wolf Studios, Cardiff
TOTAL
Approx £85om
SOURCE: Olsberg-SPI/Nordicity analysis of media releases. The investment column refers to amounts announced via publicity rather than final sums invested.
42 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 2020
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