Zoom out, past Old Street’s trendy tech roundabout, past Winchester and Southampton. Follow the map to the south-west and you’ll find the coastal town of Bournemouth, cosily snuggled against the English Channel and humbly removed from the clamor of London’s creative core.
Here lies the aptly named Outpost VFX – a studio that’s chosen to extricate itself from the tangled web of London life and set up shop less than a kilometre from sweeping sea views.
Yet the distance from London (around two hours by train) hasn’t prevented Outpost from contributing to the world’s most prominent Hollywood franchises, stretching from Paul Greengrass’s Jason Bourne to CG dinosaur extravaganza
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
.
“We feel Outpost is a unique shop in today’s day and age,” says Gez Hixson, the studio’s head of production. “Although location isn’t everything, being on the south coast gives our team a relaxed and inspiring environment in which to live and work. A focus on work/life balance is at the centre of what we do. We’re hugely ambitious, and love to work with the most creative supervisors and production teams worldwide, but that shouldn’t mean people can’t also enjoy beach life.”
Setups like Outpost are possible today thanks to technology. We’re now working and creating in an era in which physical distance poses no barrier to producing quality work. Incredibly fast broadband and remote production tools enable teams like Outpost to work side-by-side with LA, all without ever having to share the same physical space.
We do like to be beside the seaside
Outpost performs review sessions from its bespoke theatre – a cinema in miniature located alongside the production team. It’s ready for them to drop in, boot up cineSync, and grab a Wacom tablet at any time for fast and clear creative discussion.
Artists can comment, highlight, circle, draw, sketch, delineate, trace – and more besides – on a frame, making their intentions felt not in words but via pixels on a screen. What better way for artists to communicate than with a pen, after all.
“We’re building over the physical gap between ourselves and clients,” says Hixton. “We can actually draw ideas, not attempt to give them form in an email. It’s a far more efficient and articulate way of sharing knowledge.”
Outpost uses Wacom Intuos Pro tablets throughout the studio and across disciplines, while concept artists use the 27″ Cintiq touchscreen tablet for illustrations. cineSync is used for interactive review of each shot throughout production. Combining all of these technological elements, artists can quickly sketch out concepts, giving physicality to what previously existed in imagination only.
“It gives real shape to your concepts, and the client can immediately grasp them, or vice versa,” says Hixson. “That means the next iteration a client sees is much closer to what they envisage, which in turn means we can push the look and feel of a shot so much further in the same space of time. It’s an advanced creative process.”
Tools and talent
Outpost do not feel like outsiders, despite their coastal location. The team remains as fully engaged with their creative collaborators as they would be in London or LA. Where they are doesn’t matter. It just means they get to pop to the beach in-between reviews.
“Nowadays, we can work with people all over the world in real time. Without that ability we’d absolutely be doing our clients a disservice. To give clients the world over a truly personal level of service, interactive reviews in a real-time environment are crucial.”
With work now finishing up on the summer’s hotly anticipated Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Outpost has more than proven that there’s no such thing as “far flung VFX”. Studios can operate and deliver triple-A work from wherever they are in the world. It’s the talent and the tools that enable stellar work, not the location.
"I’m extremely proud of every project we do here," concludes Hixson. "Each one is another step up a long ladder to get to where we want to be – which is to be part of the vast, global VFX world.”