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Legend of the Guardians: Animal Logic reversing Australia’s brain drain

In conversation with Encore, Animal Logic CEO Zareh Nalbandian explained how, with projects such as the U$100m animated feature Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, the company is helping reverse Australia’s brain drain in the VFX and animation sectors.

How did the process for Legend of the Guardians differ from the one for Happy Feet?

What they have in common is that they both break new ground in terms of animation and how believable the characters are because they’re animated in such a realistic way.

Financially, they’re both with Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures. They’re both co-financed, and are both major tentpole movies with wide distribution around the world.

Logistically, Guardians was a far bigger film in terms of the level complexity of the world and its characters; it was ambitious creatively because the subject matter is unusual for animation, and technically, it’s also very ambitious. We worked with a director who is based in Los Angeles, so that was a logistical effort too, but it worked really well.

They are both groundbreaking movies, they both challenged us in every way, and hopefully they will both into the market with a real point of difference, standing out from other animated releases and capturing the imagination of audiences worldwide.

Happy Feet was George Miller’s film from beginning to end, and it was an amazing experience working with him on a project that he conceived; I was honoured to be an executive producer on that film and Animal Logic helped make it what it was, but Guardians is something we developed and produced, and it was conceived here from its initial concept frames to the very last scenes of the movie.

How did the project come into existence?

The studio optioned the rights to the books, and then partnered with us to help develop it and produce the film. We originated the movie based on the books; we developed the film and ended up working with Zack Snyder.

The creators of Tomorrow, When the War Began said it was difficult to find existing properties in Australia. Do you agree?

It’s always hard to find great material that will translate well into film, but what’s even harder is to develop it well and work with the right creative partners to be able to reach your audience.

It’s not that it’s hard to find good source material in Australia; we have a number of films in development and some are based on underlying Australian material, and we end up having to filter a lot of the films that are brought to us because we want to stay focused on the very best projects we’ve got.

How many people worked on Guardians?

A total crew of more than 450, and at the peak we had 380 working at once. We would have had a third of those people coming in just for this project.

Did you find it challenging in terms of your existing infrastructure?

The infrastructure was a huge challenge. We set up a really substantial rendering and storage capability to be able to achieve it, because of the technical complexity.

Some of these resources were brought in specifically for this project, and some we will retain. We’re planning a number of projects following on, so we’ll apply it to other projects.

Do you see yourselves working with Warner/Roadshow again?

Our relationship is fantastic, so it’s perfectly natural to expect us to continue to develop and produce films together, which we are doing, but we’ll also develop other films independently. We’re doing both.

Do you have the capacity to work on multiple projects simultaneously?

During Guardians we worked closely with on Australia, Knowing and Sucker Punch, and we have a permanent staff of about 50 people between Sydney and LA doing commercials on a regular basis, so we have the capacity to do 3-4 projects at any time. Our ambition is to work on more than one feature at a time, and ideally two to three.

In the film world you can’t force production; you have to have the right film at the right time, with the right creative partners. If they line up, absolutely, we could be working on two films at the same time.

Live action VFX-heavy films and fully animated CGI films are also converging to some extent. Would you call Avatar animation or live action? When you look at Guardians, you’ll see that it’s got real VFX in it, but it’s an animated movie. The types of productions could vary, but as a studio, producing animated films and VFX-rich films, we want to get our brand to the market at least once a year with a release, which means more than one film at any time because of the long lead times.

We hope we’ll get another feature into production this year, but we have a number of options that we’re tying to define.

Projects like Guardians can help reverse the brain drain that the industry tends to suffer after a big film comes to an end…

That is our ambition. In the past there has been a brain drain and we aim to make sure that we have a slate of films lined up so we can offer people long term continuity of employment and keep them working in Australia The good news is that in the last couple of years, we’ve also been able to reverse it in some way; we’ve had Australians who have been working overseas in very good jobs in different studios, come back to work on Guardians, and they’ve decided to stay. The 200+ core staff includes an amazing line-up of technical and creative leadership that I could not have imagined five years ago; we’ve both developed people which we will retain, and also a number of really great people have come back to Australia and decided to stay here. I’m really proud of the team we have and it’s second to none to anywhere in the world.

You’ve described the film as a truly great 3D experience…

We created a 3D pipeline when we were making Happy Feet, so we had the pipeline already established as we developed this film. When we went into production we were concurrently making 2D and 3D versions of the film, and we designed the cinematography, the art direction, the editorial language, all to work in both mediums. As a result, the 3D experience is a true 3D experience. It’s not a conversion, not an adaptation, not an add-on.

Why choose an LA-based director?

Zack was a real pleasure to work with, and the distance didn’t hold back the movie. We set up some great technology, and without that we would have been very challenged. We set up HD video conferencing, real time ability to interact on material between his editorial room and ours, so we had a virtual director every day; if he wasn’t in Sydney, he was at the end of a video conference for us.

Guardians was a natural evolution of our relationship. Guardians was unusual material, which lent itself to a visionary director like Zack who’s a great visual style. We felt it was a perfect marriage between the underlying material, visually translated into animation and into 3D, and Zack’s vision and what he could do with it.

Are you planning the sequel already?

It’s one project where we don’t need to think how to create a sequel. There’s a fantastic progression of characters in the books, and the stories are really rich, which is what attracted me in the first place. Once you create the universe, there’s a wonderful arc that you can tell.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole opens today.

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