In Hollywood, the digital-effects landscape has been dominated by monster-sized California firms: Industrial Light and Magic, James Cameron's Digital Domain, and Pixar. But the East Coast Digital Consortium, formed Friday by some 20 small New York effects studios, hopes to prove that small firms can render along with the big boys by going online.
"We want to say to the existing community of digital artists, you don't have to go to the West Coast to work," says ECDC charter member Richard Winkler. "We're feisty and we want ours."
More than a catty East Coast/West Coast rivalry, the ECDC wants to reshape the way the effects industry operates by building it around the "macromodel of the Net," says Winkler. The ECDC will create a network of small, cooperative firms rather than one Godzilla-like agency (read: ILM), and work to avoid the balkanization of young outfits. "On the West Coast, the companies have to devour every talent that walks through the door as defense" against the other firms, says Winkler. "Nobody wants to get into that rat race here."
Just like the network of small companies, the Net itself has allowed for a wider distribution of work. Effects studios "don't need to be in the same place," says Winkler, who works at animation company Curious Pictures. "All you need is file transfer protocols that speak to each other and a confluence of sensibility."
ECDC member Blue Sky, which did all the effects for the just-opened A Simple Wish, distributed its work to the LA studio through a high-resolution FTP application called Drum, designed by Sprint and Silicon Graphics. With Drum, 35mm full-frame stills are saved in the 10-bit data "Cineon" format and piped across the phone lines. Both sides can view the files in real-time playback and mark the frame (simultaneously mirrored) with a electronic pen.
"Unless you've got the director sitting over your shoulder, Drum makes the creative iteration process much faster," says executive producer Amy Jupiter, noting that previously they would "FedEx the tape and wait."
This "distributed production" model has been "the dirty little secret" of the industry, says Winkler. Competing effects studios have often operated in makeshift teams, farming out surplus work and catching up on each other's slack.
"Independence Day gets farmed out to dozens of different places with people working on a 4-second shot," notes Winkler. "On Titanic," says Jupiter, "the whole world has stuff."
The network of studios has extended internationally. In London, 12 companies joined together to create a private network ring called SohoNet to exchange files, and they are weeks away from opening a live link to LA, says Robin Shenfield, managing director of The Mill, London's largest effects studio. An associated company, The Mill Film, started by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott, has made pushing prints back to LA studios electronically "paramount to their plan," Shenfield says.
The ECDC hopes to do more than deftly distribute film industry projects (and cash). In addition to organizing the effects community, Winkler met with city officials in hopes of sowing the seed for the next generation of creative animators. By setting up seminars for curious kids, says Winkler, "we're looking far down the road about our work force, because it will pay off for us in six years."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
