Follow the sun
- Josh Mehlman
- 24 September 2008
- Page 1 of 2 : single page
Photo credit: Anthony Geernaert
, a digital special effects production company that is now among the world’s best. He tells Josh Mehlman about the decade’s worth of ups and downs it took to get there.t often seems the more glamorous something is on the outside, the uglier and duller it is when you find out how it really works. Think organised crime, restaurant kitchens or Paris Hilton.
Rising Sun Pictures’ Sydney studio is ample evidence that the same rule applies for the movie special effects industry. Dimly lit by bare fluorescent tubes and dozens of monitors, the company’s special effects wizards spend their workdays clicking, mousing and typing; incrementally, painstakingly bringing spectacular scenes and glamorous images to life.
Thanks to their efforts, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman get to spend an hour looking fabulous on screen; the best these digital maestros can expect is a mention in the credits among the hundreds of other people who contributed.
Was this the life cinematographer Tony Clark and three friends dreamed of when they started Rising Sun Pictures in 1995?
“We were all from an artistic background; I was a cameraman, Gail Fuller was an architect, Wayne Lewis was an animator and Steve Roberts had come from art school,” Clark says.
“We were particularly interested in film and visual effects for movies. No one was really doing much in that space at the time. It was really very early days in Australia and internationally. So we set our sights on doing that kind of work. Because there weren’t really any established relationships we figured we had this window of opportunity to get a toehold in the market before the big players made it impossible.”
Faith in technology
The four partners had been working at a production house that was one of the pioneers in computer animation but had decided instead to focus on physical production.
“We were trying to say, ‘Look, the future of this stuff is in computer animation and we need to go back there’,” Clark explains. “We were confident digital effects and the use of computer animation was the way to go. When we left to start Rising Sun Pictures, we took some computer animation software and one Silicon Graphics workstation with us. That and a PC was the complete equipment load of the company.”
From the start, Rising Sun saw the value of the internet for keeping in touch with customers and each other.
“We had a 28.8K dialup internet connection from Internode; I think they might have had about six to eight customers at the time,” says Clark. “It was the beginning of the internet era. There was email, but the web was just starting to kick off.”
Clark and his partners were confident they were heading in the right direction, though he admits they sometimes wondered if starting up a special effects company in Adelaide was taking a punt.
“The principal markets for special effects are offshore and no one in Australia was doing much of that kind of work,” he explains. “But we had some really great support from the South Australian Film Corporation and local filmmaker Mario Andreacchio, who recognised our talent and boosted us into a film called The Real Macaw where we created an animated parrot.”
Mac, the computer-generated budgie voiced by Hollywood actor John Goodman, turned out to be Rising Sun Pictures’ foot in the door of the feature film special effects club. More than a decade – and over 50 feature films – later, the company employs 150 staff across two studios in Adelaide and Sydney.
Business isn’t always fun
Success of this kind brings its own set of challenges, particularly when the strong Australian dollar has neutralised one big advantage the local film industry previously enjoyed over competitors in the United States.
“We’ve been required to focus our attention on running the business in a very efficient and effective way, but without losing the soul of what this company is. It’s a very human company,” Clark says.
“There is a very direct relationship between the people who own the company and the people working on the floor. There are 150 people here but they can come and talk to the owners or shareholders and express their concerns directly.”
Clark credits much of the company’s success to its strong focus on growing and empowering staff.
“We have developed a range of people in-house and they are wonderful talent, who can go out there and drive projects largely independently,” he says. “They have done a great job of advancing the company’s reputation.
“It gets really hard to make everybody feel valued and listened to when there are 150 employees. I know we are not perfect at it, but it matters to us as owners and shareholders that we have well-motivated, high-quality staff who feel like they have a real, direct involvement and engagement with the company.
“We started out as a group of artists and we wanted people to feel differently about this place than what most people feel about their jobs.”
'There is a point you don't want to shrink beyond, because you start throwing away your ability to do the work'
Stick to what you’re good at
There were certainly times when the company’s leaders might have regretted their decision in 2002 to focus on feature film work at the expense of other business.
“Up until then we had been doing basically anything we could to survive,” Clark recalls. “We were doing TV commercials, websites and multimedia, and we were so busy trying to do everything for everybody that we weren’t being anything to anybody.
“We decided to go for broke in film visual effects. It made us a really narrow and sharply defined niche business, which of course makes you completely exposed. As soon as we made that decision, there was this hugely quiet period where we were severely tested in our ability to stay alive. But we got through.
“Of course, at the time, we were thinking maybe we should have stayed doing everything. It was a real test of commitment and strength for everybody involved. All the staff pulled together and we went through periods where nobody got paid. But we came out the other end into a really strong period. The strategy of being focused ultimately paid us a dividend.”
Adjusting to changes
Many firms have to deal with seasonal changes in workforce requirements: retailers need to put on extra staff before Christmas; accountants need extra help at the end of financial year. The film industry is much more unpredictable, which means Rising Sun Pictures needs to adjust its workforce up and down to suit ever-changing needs.
“To grow and shrink a workforce, you need a group of people who are happy to work on a contract basis,” Clark explains. “In Adelaide in particular that is challenging and it’s challenging internationally because there is a very high demand for talented people.”
