BURBANK, CA - VFX Legion (www.vfxlegion.com) is a virtual post production facility. A division of Legion Studios, LLC, VFX Legion is a studio that's trying something new. Founded by VFX supervisor James Hattin and a team of like-minded individuals, Legion has a headquarters that rests against the mountainous backdrop of Burbank, CA, though its collective of 50 artists are distributed across the globe.What we're doing at Legion is empowering a new way of working for those on the frontlines of the creative industry, says Hattin. There's no reason why, in the next five years, what we're doing won't be the standard. It makes sense on so many levels - it's just the way things are going.
Worldwide Working
In the visual effects industry - or any industry, for that matter - there's long been a standard: people group together in one physical location where collaboration and communication can be achieved quickly, easily and efficiently.
Today, that same collaborative effort no longer requires physical proximity - Moore's Law, technological innovation, and the uptake of superfast broadband are allowing for a new way of remote working; one that Legion has grabbed by the horns.
I remember going to the EPCOT Center at Disney World - the area of the park dedicated to technological innovation and human achievements, begins Christopher Sinnott, VFX producer at Legion. One of the first things you walk into is a bunch of kids going to school on a computer - instead of walking to school they're sitting at home, interacting with the teacher on the screen. It was the future of schooling. I still remember seeing that because, without sounding too cheesy, that future is now - it's the reality of visual effects today.
But Legion was not solely born out of the fact that a VFX facility could work in such a way - more to the point, that perhaps they should.
Legion started from a desire to be able to work where you live, and not have to be tied down to some of the most expensive cities in the world, explains Sinnott. Being in visual effects is incredibly hard, because it's such a specific industry. Our skill set is so niche that in order to grow and improve - while making enough money to feed your family - you have to go to wherever the work is, which might be India, Vancouver, or San Diego. These places are pretty darn expensive, and can leave a lot to be desired for the VFX artist just leaving university.
Legion was the solution - a disruptive model that goes against the accepted industry trend. At Legion, artists work wherever they may be - whether that's at home, or from a small shared office in their hometown - contributing to projects via the internet and working to their own self-dictated schedules.
It's about getting the best talent available, explains Hattin. Whereas people in the past may have wanted to leave the industry because they would prefer to move to Kansas and be with their families, rather than slog away in a far distant land, there's now another option; a way of leveraging that skillset wherever you are in the world.
This is something that the industry has consistently grown towards and the technology is finally there to support it. This is the disruptive model to what we're living in, and I think it's what VFX needs.
Although this distributed model helps Legion save vast amounts of money that would otherwise be funnelled into infrastructure, the company's philosophy is grounded on more than simply making a profit. Legion's true raison d tre - one to which it prescribes a great deal of import - is the empowerment of those responsible for the innovation and creativity so important in the world of visual effects.
There's a book about the finance industry called Let My People Go Surfing, but it might as well be for the VFX industry at this point, says Sinnott. Being a part of your family's lives is so important. At Legion we allow a system where you can see your family and afford to live too. All over the world we have people creating VFX for us, while also being able to walk their kids to school every day. We're allowing that flexibility, and that's important - being artistically creative is not a science; it has to happen organically, not according to some strict schedule.
Legion's model has been set up to ensure that if they find an artist who is gifted at a particular skill set, they can continually go back to them, rather than losing them to a better paid job or a round of redundancies.
If an artist has a busy schedule, we work our pipelines around them, not vice versa, explains Hattin. Our system allows for night and weekend work; it allows you to have another part time job; it allows you to work around your spouse's schedule. And, importantly, underneath it all, these are people that we don't necessarily have to lay off when we don't have any shows. Giving our artists that time, flexibility and security is what truly engenders a creative atmosphere.
This approach to artist empowerment is the name of the game at Legion. Here, the whole business model has been built with artist creativity at its beating heart, and Legion is keen to point out that the studio will always give credit where credit is due.
What we try to do at Legion is bring the significance back to the artist, says Sinnott. We have a compositing team that has four artists in New Zealand that just dominate. Thanks to the way we work we can bring that back to them directly every time. When talking about the work, we don't say Legion worked on these shots'. No: it's those artists that did it.
Bringing that significance back to the artist - giving them the spotlight - that's what we truly strive for.
Establishing Structure
Legion personifies a vastly different ap
