Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

With the Halloween season upon us, thoughts turn to images of a mad (or “sanity-challenged”) scientist lurking through the shadows, searching for materials he will stitch together to create his masterwork.

Building something new from what has existed before is a familiar pursuit, and has been since before Mary Shelley first wrote of Dr. Frankenstein and his desire to breathe life into the lifeless. Fast forward to 2003, and the closing of a 10-year old visual effects company, and this tale assumes true form.

When the news of Cinesite Hollywood’s closing first hit, there was too much going on to think beyond the immediate needs: finishing work for projects in-house, determining exit plans for 200-plus employees, taking inventory, shipping equipment to the London office, and wrapping up all outstanding issues before the mass exodus would make such tasks nearly impossible.

Weeks quickly passed, as talented artists and production personnel were welcomed by the large studios — a tremendous relief for me, the executive producer. While various departments finished their work and were released to new jobs, the questions most often uttered through the desolate hallways were “what’s next?” or “how can we keep a sense of this place alive?”

Perhaps it was the hectic and emotional nature of that time, or our “what have we got to lose” attitude about trying something new, but my co-founding partner David Lingenfelser and I thought the time was right to open a facility of our own, bringing along the best elements of that previous experience. Though the company that had introduced us both to visual effects no longer represented the long-term business model, we could take the pieces that worked… and hope to figure out the rest of the puzzle along the way. Thus began our tinkering in the lab.

While getting any start-up off the ground is no easy task, the timing may have been ideal. There was that same feeling from back when the first digital facilities ushered in a whole new method by which visual effects were created. During the decade since the early ‘90s, developments in technology had allowed a desk-side computer tower to render the same images once processed by rows of refrigerator-sized machines.

The emergence of cost-effective hardware and software made starting one’s own digital business possible, and our initial resources were those that we could unplug at home, load into the back seats of our cars, and bring to the office. In fact, our first shots were output on machines we already owned, and it wasn’t until a few projects booked that we took the plunge and bought Mac G5s solely for the company.

At the same time technology was becoming accessible, however, financial incentives from abroad seemed to be drawing film production and related visual effects work away from L.A. more than ever before. Oddly enough, the struggle to keep work in town may have contributed to the success of many fledgling companies opening at this time. To help explain that theory, it would be good to have some background on these newcomers.

Several smaller houses such as Furious FX, often miscategorized as “boutiques,” began to emerge as mid-sized companies found it difficult to balance the resources needed to compete for higher end work. To avoid draining funds during downtime, these facilities never grew or retained an ample staff needed for the award of entire large-scale projects, and the ramp-up for complex shows was steep. Thus, the strategy meant to protect them was also impeding their ultimate success.

Smaller businesses face the same issue to a degree. Namely, how does one maintain a low-overhead structure while still being a valued, multifaceted player in the vfx game? There is always the niche market (or true boutique), where one can provide a particular skill at a reasonable rate that makes the handing off of these services a worthwhile consideration for larger companies, or filmmakers with limited effects needs. Becoming a full-service shop, albeit a compact one, can entail a more careful balancing act.

The good news for facilities like FFX is that we sometimes get the opportunity to demonstrate our abilities on a grander scale than we may initially be perceived. Many studios, producers and supervisors will look toward smaller houses as a resource for work that exceeds the capacity of a larger vendor focused on difficult CG shots. When it comes to initial impressions, size often matters, and convincing potential clients that we have the same types of artists, talent, hardware and software packages as other businesses in town can be an uphill battle. While it may not always be feasible to take on an entire project given its (and our) size, we can easily deliver a substantial number of shots, and even a handful of the most complex sequences.

What we have found works in our favor is that a smaller facility can prove itself through a combination of creativity and throughput to win over long-term supporters. With the pressure to keep work based in L.A. while maintaining a budget, studios are anxious to find “secret weapons” in the form of reliable, low-overhead vendors. Having already worked with so many visual effects supervisors and producers while with our former employer, we at Furious FX benefit from colleagues already familiar with our staff’s capabilities, and that comfort level goes a long way.

This same building of trust has also nurtured relationships between visual effects companies. The struggle to feed the Hollywood film community has created a peaceful coexistence for small and large facilities alike. Budget-conscious productions now have the option of awarding their medium-sized projects to a single company, or dividing more substantial ones between several cost-effective outlets. Larger players can still take on entire effects-heavy shows, though they can also work with smaller farm-out vendors to keep their own personnel costs down, thus allowing them to manage more than one such project at any given time.