Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

Sony Pictures Imageworks' recently announced satellite production strategy harnesses talent, technology and economics to create an exciting creative environment. Our facility in Culver City is the hub of a global digital production studio, which is amazing and inspiring but not without its difficulties. For this month's Digital Eye, I've been asked to take you into the process and some of the decisions that led to this expansion plan.

There is no question that the visual effects and animation business is continuing to grow. Shot counts continue to escalate while pressure to control costs and reduce production schedules colors every bid. Meanwhile, we thrive on the challenge of breaking new ground and delivering an audience experience second to none. While the work we produce may defy physics and render the impossible possible, from a production and business perspective we operate in a very real world of physical and financial constraints.

To face these realities, three major factors influenced our thinking. One is very simple: space. We're out of it. Over the past 15 years, Imageworks has grown from five people in a studio office suite to about 1,000 in more than half a dozen buildings. As importantly, as our capacity grows, so grows our infrastructure. There are physical limits to how many processors and other machines you can pack into our main machine room. The second factor is location. We want to be in close proximity to centers of artistic excellence and convenient to our clients. The third is economics. Our competitive landscape knows no borders. While we always compete based on the quality of our work, we can't disregard price. Moreover, the reality for us, as it is for others, is that the actual cost of production is relatively flat around the world. However, various government and regional incentives have an impact, especially for companies whose geographic location affords them attractive benefits.

At Imageworks, we took a worldview on our business. We looked at our clients and where they work. Los Angeles is our home and it is where the vast majority of the studios and filmmakers live and work. Los Angeles is also home to an extensive and talented workforce and a vast educational network. There was never any question about our front door; it is in Culver City, as it always has been since we first opened our doors. Unless the entire motion picture industry relocates from Hollywood, a scenario that we do not foresee, Imageworks will always maintain its base here precisely because we believe that the ease of access for our clients is an essential part of our business and the service we provide.

Yet one of the things we realized is that in the 11 years since we moved into our present headquarters building, we went from a hardwired world to a networked world. Where communication even within our building used to be network circumscribed, in today's world it is now almost as easy to connect across the globe as it is to the office next door. As we started to outgrow our main building, we brought additional buildings online. What we also realized is that we were starting to add small, focused teams in remote locations; for instance, we set up a small team in Carpenteria to work onsite with a client.

Suddenly it was not such a leap to imagine connecting other small teams of specialists as well. So this year we established a small office in Novato, California, where John Schlag runs a team of six artists. This is an example of locating ourselves in centers of artistic excellence. Without uprooting talent, we can offer creative opportunities in a creative manner. For them and us it is the best of both worlds. We can work together without the need for them to relocate.

Two-and-a-half years ago, we started to work with a company in Chennai, India, to add to our capacity. FrameFlow was founded three years ago to deliver high-quality effects support to top facilities worldwide. Prior to becoming Imageworks India, FrameFlow proved the value of working with Sony Pictures Imageworks on such movies as Click, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3, among many other projects. The level of professionalism and quality of work that we experienced in working with their team was exemplary, and gave us the confidence to extend and establish a strong long-term relationship. The addition of Imageworks India, as with all of our operations, enables us to scale our business based on whatever our productions require. Now that Imageworks India is part of our integrated production workflow, we are able to share some of our proprietary tools that enable the artists in India to work share shots with their counterparts in Culver City. Prior to this, Imageworks India could only use standard off-the-shelf software that limited the type of work they could tackle. With the wide variety of shots required in any typical production, the adjunct of the India facility allows many of our experienced artists in Culver City to work on ever more complex and groundbreaking shots on which we have built our reputation, while we develop the talent base in India with gradually more intricate work.