Life

The future of sfx is in China

By Han Bingbin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-23 11:09

A totally Chinese team of visual effects artists scored their first Emmy recently. Han Bingbin goes behind the scenes.

It was a Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks co-production on the HBO channel. The program was The Pacific, a big-budget, 10-episode mini-series on World War II. The scene was a spectacular beach landing. The award was an Emmy honoring the best visual effects in a movie or mini series given on Aug 30 this year. The recipient was Christopher Bremble, head honcho of Beijing-based visual effect company Base FX. His team? An all-Chinese crew. It was an award which gave recognition to the work Bremble's team had invested for episode five of The Pacific, and the fact that the company has come up from behind to compete with the best in the industry.

"The award is not only for Base but is to be shared with the whole industry in China," Bremble had said. "Because I didn't train every artist and this whole range of companies helped to make this happen."

He was referring to the training his young visual effects team garnered studying at schools such as the Institute of Digital Art and Mars Era and working for companies such as Crystal CG and Hualong Film Digital Production.

It was the maturing of a long process, and would not have happened if Bremble had not stuck his neck out when opportunity knocked. After seeing the producers reject the work of another company who had already spent six months completing nearly 100 takes of the scene, Bremble told them, "We can do it".

He had previously worked with HBO on other Emmy award-winning series, Recount (2008) and Grey Garden (2009), and that gave him the credentials he needed to pitch for The Pacific job.

What followed was two months of relentless hard work as his team put together more than 60 versions of shots for the landing scene to meet the exacting standards of Steven Spielberg.

What the team had to do would tax their creativity to the maximum. They had to replicate thousands of warships landing on the beach, based on only six. They also had to turn the lush and luxuriant equatorial forests of Australia into terrible scenes of devastation and destruction in the aftermath of enemy bombing.

The effort paid off when both the first and fifth episodes of The Pacific were nominated for the Emmy. The judges decided that Bremble's team deserved the award based on the technical difficulties and the ambition in the execution of the special effects.

He attributes the success to his young team's hunger for success and their willingness to push the boundaries.

"Just because you haven't done something doesn't mean you can't," Bremble said. "My role here is simply to get them the opportunity when they were ready for it."

That same strong motivation has pushed the company from a 12-man studio in 2006 to a company with more than 150 now, including an all-Chinese creative team.

When Bremble started the business with his Chinese partner Xie Ning, he did not think he would be working on projects like The Pacific. That is just the start. In the pipeline are projects including HBO's next big thing Boardwalk Empire (Season 2) and Hollywood hits such as Conan The Barbarian, Death Race 2, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 and a 3-D animation called The Flying Machine.

The company is also working on a big Hollywood production to be released in February next year, which Bremble says will "shock" many, once on screen. "It's a big show, and we really grew a lot on the project. The staff and leadership matured into a very professional team."

American productions currently account for 75 percent of the company's jobs, But, Bremble is all for pitching for more Chinese accounts so local business will gradually make up 50 percent of revenue.

He believes the potential is there, and he sees the move to invest more in visual effects in the pursuit of quality. For example, he said, the big budget Monkey King will invest 5 million dollars in visual effects, where one million would have been a ceiling last year.

The trend was spurred by the astounding success of Avatar in China, which made producers realize that audiences will pay good money to see a well-made film.

For Base FX, recent local productions in the works include Tsui Hark's All About Women, the epic movie Empire of Silver and Sacrifice by Chen Kaige. Still to come is Gordon Chan's The Mural.

Chris Bremble is confident that major global visual effect companies will soon set up base in China as the talent pool matures.

"At some point, they'll need to be in China. It'll be very interesting to see what will happen in the future."

Top: The Pacific wins Base FX a first victory. Center: An impressive SFX scene in the blockbuster The King of Fighters. Bottom: Bremble's young Chinese team is learning on the run. Photos provided to China Daily