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The Digital Eye: Connected!

In this month's edition of "The Digital Eye," Jenny Fulle explains the strategy behind Imageworks' launch of new satellite facilities in Northern California, India and New Mexico.

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.

In Carpenteria, California, we have a small team working "on location" in a satellite set up to serve Robert Zemeckis in his editing room about 80 miles north of our offices. For his performance capture features, we set up our "wheels" camera unit there while the majority of our crew is ensconced in Culver City. What most people don't know is that we've been operating with this remote team since The Polar Express. In some ways, this was the prototype for our satellite operations, proving to ourselves that we could effectively connect regardless of geography.

Two weeks ago, we announced our plans to establish an additional facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While this will not come online for another 10 to 12 months, it is a very exciting opportunity for us. As we plan for future production, we are already taking into account the financial benefits that New Mexico affords us. With competition from around the world, and other countries offering either tax credits or favorable monetary conversion rates, we found ourselves disadvantaged by the simple fact of our location. We started to explore a variety of alternatives but the most promising of them was in New Mexico. Between the development at Mesa Del Sol and the Albuquerque Studios, we have the chance to purpose build a structure specifically to house our needs.

Both Governor Bill Richardson and the Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez have taken a strong interest in attracting our business, largely through a tax credit that returns some 25% of what we spend in the state. This, combined with some of our other initiatives, is allowing us to recalibrate our production costs downward and reflect these savings in our bid structure effective immediately. The satellite structure enables us to engage resources across our entire network and distribute our workflow evenly throughout our operations. In doing so, all of our productions receive the benefit of savings, which are projected at 20%, and make us very competitive with facilities in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the U.K.

New Mexico also presents us with some other benefits. First, it allows us to expand our physical structure. A good portion of our initial wave of activity will focus on the expansion of our processing infrastructure. This is largely in response to our maxing out of our Culver City machine room. In fact, part of the reason we looked to New Mexico was the result of shopping for additional space to accommodate our machine room needs. In that process, we realized that it was no more difficult to bring a machine room located in a different state than it was to have one across town.

Once additional computing is in place, we'll be able to offer an added level of security to our clients, something no one else can quite duplicate at this time: a full service emergency backup. Imagine if a power failure or other emergency were to take Los Angeles offline during the final rush toward the end of a production. Under present circumstances, the release date of an entire picture could be at risk in such an event. However, with our remote locations and essentially mirrored facilities with comprehensive capabilities, Imageworks will be in a position to relocate production and continue with minimal impact.

Lifestyle is another attractive factor. The overall cost of living is less in New Mexico than it is in the Los Angeles area. As our business matures, so too matures the talent, who themselves are moving into new phases of their own lives. The ability to live and work in other locations beyond our base is appealing. The alternative location offers some interesting opportunities, including reasonable housing prices, a wealth of outdoor activities and access to quality education.

In fact, education is another factor in our Albuquerque plans. The University of New Mexico is situating its multidisciplinary film school in close proximity to the Albuquerque Studios. Imageworks always has maintained close ties to the academic community through its IPAX program, which works closely with leading programs across the country to help develop the next generation of talent. In Albuquerque, we will have the opportunity to situate ourselves in the midst of a production environment and virtually next door to what promises to be an innovative academic program.

The simplest fact of our industry is that it is getting bigger while the world is getting smaller. We effectively compete on a global basis with players located around the world. Our ability to scale and manage our business through this network of tightly integrated satellites provides the filmmaking community with a stable production resource capable of effectively managing cost while providing world class talent and eye-popping imagery to captivate audiences around the world.

Jenny Fulle.

Jenny Fulle, evp of Sony Pictures Imageworks, is overseeing visual effects and animation production on the feature film Beowulf, having recently completed Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3. She previously oversaw production on Open Season, the first fully animated CG feature film from Sony Pictures Animation, and currently is serving the same role for Sony Picture Animation's upcoming CG feature Surfs Up!

In her role as exec producer at Imageworks, Fulle's credits include Academy Award nominated The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Academy Award winning Spider-Man 2, Academy Award and BAFTA nominated Spider-Man and The ChubbChubbs!, Imageworks' first animated short film and Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film in 2002. Her other credits include Zathura, The Aviator, The Matrix Revolutions, The Matrix Reloaded, Bad Boys II, and Stuart Little 2.

Fulle joined Imageworks in 1997 as svp of production and exec producer.

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