The Warner Bros Wabbit has a conversation with a certain antipodean devil about setting up shop in Vancouver.
Animal Logic has certainly not slipped the announcement of a Vancouver studio into the screen community. The company’s website is glowing with excitement.
‘We are excited to share the good news that we’re expanding our long established animation production relationship with Warner Bros. Pictures (Happy Feet, Legend of the Guardians, The LEGO Movie), by signing a three picture deal that will see us set up a second animation studio in Vancouver, Canada.’ says the company.
For the last fifteen years, Animal Logic has sustained a close relationship with Warner Bros, which has survived the usual policy and personnel shifts of a major American studio, although it has never been formalised into a joint venture.
It began when Animal Logic worked on the Matrix Films, and deepened with George Miller’s Happy Feet. Now the two companies have signed a deal to cover three unspecified Warner Bros films, which takes the deal to what it calls ‘the next level’. At the moment, the Sydney studio is working with Warners on LEGO Batman and Ninjego, and will soon start a third unspecified but non-LEGO film with the Los Angeles studio.
‘This is a major investment’ said Animal Logic CEO Zareh Nalbandian. ‘Setting up a company to support three hundred people and three tentpole animated features back to back is a huge commitment. But we are very confident in making that commitment because we do have a three picture deal, and we will be able to justify that investment and see a great result.’
With six pictures on the blocks, Animal Logic has a capacity issue. Said Nalbandian, ‘Being able to grow by that scale in the short period of time to attract three hundred more talented high end artists over the next year would be very difficult in Australia with our talent pool. By the middle of next year we expect to be tipping five hundred in Sydney, and getting close to three hundred in Vancouver.’
The North American freelance community around Vancouver animation and post production companies has become a significant talent base. ‘At the end of the day, films are only as good as the talented people who worked on them,’ he said. ‘Vancouver is very rich in talent. The industry has really boomed in the last five years.’
The appeal has been strengthened by the British Columbian government which has extended the DAVE tax deal to include VFX. US companies now in Vancouver include ILM, Digital Domain, Sony’s Imageworks and MPC.
There are other reasons, of course. The tax breaks are in line with the Australian offer. The time and date difference between Los Angeles and Sydney is a problem, while directors, key crew and Warner Bros executives would rather flit north to Vancouver than schlep the fourteen hour run across the Pacific.
For Nalbandian, ‘the final thing is that we find we are very culturally akin to the Canadians. A lot of Canadians have come to Australia and made it their home. We feel we speak the same language and have similar work ethics. We know it will be a really great cultural fit as well.’
Is it possible that the creative emphasis in Animal Logic will leak across the Pacific to the West Coast? ‘At the core, everything that is great about us is Australian. We are hoping to seed that in Vancouver. We punch above our weight in terms of the talent, and I would never leave that behind.
‘My home is in Australia, and going forward the people around me, the excutive and creative and technical team are Australians, and because of them we can make this next move. They will help train the people in Vancouver and carry our culture to them.’
Zareh Nalbandian is also the Deputy Chair of Ausfilm, committed to strengthening overseas production in Australia. The company’s capacity problem raises questions about our ability to train and sustain high level professional talent when few companies have the resources to run training programs.
Indeed, he himself started as a general trainee in Colorfilm, in the simpler time when film was processed in baths and post production was about wet-gate printers and neg matching. Does he have a similar program in Animal Logic?
The same impulse certainly prevails. The company has run internships with Screen NSW, and ‘those interns have delivered some of the best leaders in the company. More recently this year we have initiated our own internship program we are trialling. This is a self-financed program.’
‘We are doing that because I am determined to give people that opportunity to step into the business. If they are really hungry and committed and talented they will do great things.’
Animal Logic is also negotiating with what he calls ‘a large local university to develop a training program which will bring more quality graduates into the industry.’
In an expanding company, leadership is a key issue. ‘There is no one route,’ he said. ‘ We see great leadership coming from all parts of the company. Receptionists who become great animation producers. We always distinguish between creative ability and the ability to lead. You don’t have to be the best in your field at a particular craft to be the best leader in your field – leadership requires a different set of skills.’
Partly because the industry has not had the kind of steady growth that planners have craved, the post-production and animation community has become particularly itinerant, first between Australian states and later around the world. The loss of young experts has been significant enough to call a brain drain. But, says Nalbandian, ‘The good news is we’ve seen that young itinerant workforce leave, but when they are ready to settle down and have a family and buy a house, they do come back home.’
‘The important thing is to have great projects to attract them back so they can have the same opportunities as they have in London.’
Animal Logic also supports its own development division, Animal Logic Entertainment, to create projects over which the company has full creative control and ownership of the intellectual property. By building production capacity in Vancouver, Nalbandian expects to create the opportunity to bring more international productions to Sydney, and to support his growing slate of internal productions.
‘Realistically I’d like to think that in 2016 our films will start to into production, which would be really good timing given everything else that is going on,’ he said.
