Crossing Boundaries

There's something going on at the Double Negative office in Singapore amid the hammering and spray painting, and it's not just for effect.

“Double Negative Singapore opened its doors in 2009, and has since evolved into a fullyblown visual effects facility,” Double Negative's creative director Nathan McGuinness said during a quick tour of the expanded facility at Fusionopolis, which was still under construction. Double Negative Singapore, while a smaller outfi t than its parent company in London, has worked on VFX shots for big projects such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Parts 1 and 2), Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The VFX house has big plans for the Singapore offi ce to take on more of the work, and to eventually do all of the VFX shots in its Asia offi ce.

“The goal is to create a mirror image of the Double Negative London pipeline [capabilities],” he said, and with that vision in mind McGuinness is putting the 12 years of owning and building a VFX facility in Los Angeles, Asylum Visual Effects, into growing and running Double Negative Singapore. He has worked on big budget features such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Minority Report, the first two Transformers movies and three Pirates of the Caribbean films. McGuinness has been nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects, nominated for 4 BAFTAS with one win and several VES nominations and awards.

McGuinness was officially brought on to the Double Negative team earlier this year as its creative director. One of his first tasks is growing and developing the Singapore office, which for him means personally supervising the facility upgrade and recruitment drive.

“I believe that building a VFX facility involves creativity, because it is a creative domain,” McGuinness said. “I'm a creative person. I love being a visionary for directors, and building a facility is part of that vision. Without that you can't achieve what you want to do. Someone's got to put together a facility that's designed for imagination.” McGuinness was quick to add however, that Double Negative's expansion plans are focused on building a world-class facility for a team of world-class talent. “I feel there's a perception of Asia that's not quite correct, [and] I'm trying to change that,” he said, emphasizing, “We're not here to save money. We're not here to set up a sweatshop. We're putting ourselves in the world standard.”

“Singapore does allow us in some ways to be more flexible in our pricing. [But] I don't like hearing third world. This is a high-tech country, where technology is booming, and we're here to pioneer world-standard effects in the region,” McGuinness said. “This business right here is a 10-year plan. Look, they did it in New Zealand. Who would have thought you could set up a company in New Zealand that has become so grand that people will come near and far to do that.”

Shiny new digs
While other big production and post houses such as Infinite Studios and Industrial Light and Magic Singapore are moving to the Mediopolis media hub a few blocks away, Double Negative is staying at Fusionopolis citing the “great support” from developer JTC Corporation.

Double Negative's facility upgrade includes quadrupled storage and rendering capacity in a much bigger office space, and includes the Genexis Theatre next door. The egg-shaped, 572-seat theatre, suspended between the three towers of Fusionopolis uses as part of its acoustic design 400,000 timber beads, and makes Double Negative the only post facility in the region with its own full-size screening theatre. The new offi ce will also have a soundproof room, which McGuinness jokingly said is “where the artists can work out their differences”. The ‘new' offi ce is prepared to house up to 250 artists.

While Double Negative declined to name a sum for the capital outlay, it stressed that it's key asset is its people. The company's independence from the corporate machine and its culture, similar to the way McGuinness ran Asylum, was one of the key reasons he accepted the post when Double Negative MD Alex Hope and CEO Matthew Holben offered the job.

“I've always treated my staff throughout my [career] as absolute gold,” he said, and that means trying to create an environment where people will stay. McGuinness candidly admits “We're a long way from the competitors, so we need to shine,” and this means an aggressive recruitment strategy, in-house training programmes and a partnership with some of the leading schools in Singapore to educate and prepare future VFX artists and to give Double Negative fi rst pick at the best of the best.

As head of creative, McGuinness works closely with the Double Negative Singapore recruitment team in fi lling key positions, which to him is pretty much every post in the VFX workfl ow. He personally interviews animators, lighters and lead technical directors, and admits while he initially had diffi culty fi nding good senior compositors, rotoscope artists and producers in an industry where talent mobility is the norm, he's been pleasantly surprised at the quality of talent once applications started pouring in. “We have a great team of locally grown compositing artists that are just blowing my mind. We've got a good team of animators, lighting artists we've actually trained from the ground up, and we've had a great intake of TDs.”

A stellar resume and eye-popping show reel won't necessarily get artists a job offer though. Fifteen years in Hollywood has taught McGuinness how to spot true potential, and that is what he's really after.

“I will see people on the technical side that show a high level of technique but haven't had the opportunity to work on projects that represent them, and I can see that in a reel. I can see that compositor has put together all that really bad stuff and he's almost made it look good. I can see that guy has an eye, he's got talent, and I fi nd them. I don't get aroused over ‘oh, that guy worked on Transformers' unless it's really brilliant work. I got more excited with this other kid who showed me some really bad CG elements because he did a breakdown, and I saw how he merged them, and it came out beautiful. He did a beautiful job with crap. And that's a star in the making.”

In the works
Double Negative Singapore is already planning the next phase of the expansion, which it hopes to complete by 2014. Meanwhile, the VFX house has kept busy with projects such as John Carter, The Pirates! Band of Misfi ts, and Battleship.

“Come January is the big push,” McGuinness said. “We're [anticipating] the majority of The Bourne Legacy and the new Superman movie Man of Steel. Next year is the year we put everything we've done this year to the test. We've ironed out the crinkles, we've got great staff coming in, the local home-grown staff have excelled this year [despite] being thrown into deep waters. We're going to prepare ourselves for 2013, when we can take on a full tent pole movie.”