There’s more to the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States than language—especially in the digital visual effects world. My experience working in both countries has shown me that for all the similarities, there are also notable differences.
First a bit of history: Until 1988, the model in postproduction in the U.K. was your typical post house—though it came in varieties, including the daily basic, the cheap, the sad and the exclusive. All offered a similar package of services, but with different levels of technical experience and vast differences in client appeal.
The one commonality: Everything was based on the company name and not on the staff members’ reputations. Visual effects were used to fix problems, rather than becoming jobs designed and shot for the sake of the effects themselves. The "visual effects supervisor" title didn’t exist in commercials. Visual effects for movies were mainly done optically.
According to directors I came in contact with from the U.S. at that time, post houses here were basically run in similar fashion. The interesting and unique stuff was going on at movie effects companies like ILM, which moved to the digital VFX world from optical.
Because the U.S. had greater wealth to sustain R&D, some companies were able to develop new software and techniques for effects, with staff operating within very specific, specialized and separate departments, not unlike a factory.
By ’90, a major change had taken hold in the U.K.: the emergence of the VFX boutiques—small companies that specialized in VFX production. The aim was to design and produce effects for commercials. Personal relationships with the directors and agencies became the rule. The operators became artists, and some became stars. They had experienced producers—the people who would see a project through to completion, keeping it on budget, bringing in the necessary artists. Of course, you will recognize this as a modified version of the U.S. model used in movies. This afforded the U.K. supervisors a well-rounded education, bringing experience in all the current VFX disciplines, like university.
However, in the States it was not until around ’98 that a significant number of small, new breakaway companies came to focus on specific commercial markets, like cars, pop videos and general products. There was also the finishing house type, with the focus mainly on the online editing process, conforming, titling, some effects and maybe telecine.
As expected, the style of work on either side of the Atlantic is dictated partially by market demographics. In America jobs usually have to appeal widely across all 50 states, with a variety of end-users; in England—a smaller market with a few distinct regions that nevertheless are more evenly mixed socially and culturally—the commercial work can be creatively more extreme.
Communication between VFX house, agency and client is much easier in the U.K., where all collaborators are likely to be in the same city. In the U.S., phone, e-mail, conference calls, etc. are much more common. Projects can literally span the globe (e.g., clients in Japan commonly working with a post house in Los Angeles). The differences in communication and co-operation impact the role of the VFX supervisor stateside. The agency may or may not stay around during post. It becomes the VFX supervisor’s role both to continue the agency’s creative vision and to keep it informed. In the U.K., the director sits with the supervisor till the end, continues his/her creative control and is more collaborative with the supervisor.
The U.K. advantage is the potential for stronger, more individually creative visual styles. A disadvantage is the lack of access to new developments and money to finance R&D. The U.S. advantage is the ability to produce high-volume, high-standard effects based around a client’s unusual schedules. The U.S. disadvantage is the potential for blander, more conservative visuals with an emphasis on technical trickery rather than visual flare.
But in 2002, the hybrid between the two countries is being re-shaped to fit the changing needs and new technologies. This is the way we have come to work at our company. So the similarities, like the common language, are growing stronger where each country takes clues from the other. So much the better for the state of the art, I feel.
