Ready...set... visual effects!

MANILA, Philippines - Globalization has brought many industries to our shores, and Hollywood is no exception. With the Philippines as a major receiving end of offshoring businesses, a visual effects (VFX) company has nudged the filmmaking capital of the world to outsource to the country, putting homegrown artists behind the scenes of your favorite Hollywood movies.

Recent blockbusters such as Australia, Watchmen, and G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra are some of the Hollywood films that the artists of the Cebu-based VFX company Hirota Paint Industries have lent their skills and talents to. The company, which has been operating in the country since June 2008, was founded by Brian Hirota, a Japanese-American visual effects supervisor and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hirota offers Hollywood visual effects services such as Rotoscoping, Matte Painting and Compositing.

In an interview with STARweek, Kyle Yamamoto, Hirota trainer/supervisor who has worked on such visual effects-heavy films as Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantastic Four, The Fast and the Furious, among others, said that these post-movie production services are time-consuming and labor-intensive, making it ideal for Hollywood to outsource these services so they can focus on other facets of production.

Yamamoto reveals that post-production movie work has been gradually migrating from traditional hubs such as Los Angeles to economical locations outside the US. In Asia, the established Hollywood outsourcing sites are India and Thailand.

According to its office and IT manager Reggie Magalso, the owner, who is married to a Filipino-American from Tacloban, had initially explored setting up shop in Mexico. However, on a recent visit to the Philippines with his wife, he saw Cebu as a viable headquarters of their new company, with a satellite office in Los Angeles. Magalso added Hollywood-based artists had to be flown in to immerse the mostly former re-touch artists ign VFX techniques and software.

So what do Hirota artists do exactly? The 20-something artists laugh about the difficulty of explaining their job to other people. Most of the time, they simply say animation to punctuate the confusion, but it’s not really animation per se. They are called 2D artists and are behind the various processes by which imagery is created if not manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. The job requirements range from as basic as color grading, to wire removal (so that it wouldn’t appear like that leaked Wolverine film), to more complex work like generating a background from nothing.

The major steps in this whole process, however, are called Rotoscoping, Matte Painting, and Compositing. 

Rotoscoping is tracing an object so that a silhouette (also called a matte) is created which can be used to extract that object from a scene for use on a different background. Matte painting is the painting of a representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that permits filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that would otherwise be too costly or impractical to construct or go to. Compositing is the integration of elements, like live action footage and computer-generated imagery (CGI), from separate sources into single images, often to produce the illusion that all these form part of the same scene. These only prove how Hollywood is pushing the limits in terms of technique and technology that go into stunning onscreen imagery.

When STARweek visited their workplace located along Gorordo Avenue in Cebu City, the artists showed us samples of the work they were doing for a forthcoming action-packed film, which included wire harnesses removed from black warriors leaping from floor to floor on a multi-storey building, the multiplication of red lanterns in a surreal indoor face-off scene, as well as the huge cut “digitally” inflicted on a beautiful oriental face about to be kissed by the film’s bad guy.  

Their portfolio also includes the recreation of a river under the bridge where a bomb exploded in G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, as well as the breathtaking nighttime backdrop for outdoor scenes in the Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman starrer Australia.

Sounds simple? But did we mention how tedious and painstaking a process it is? This is because they have to manually work on a frame-per-frame basis, and a three-second image, which spells 50 to 100 frames, could take them more a week to complete. G.I. Joe, for one, took approximately six to seven months to finish. 

To get the job done, they are given a set of prerequisites; if not a concept that will truly test their creative boundaries to materialize, as realistic and consistent with the entire film as possible. There are still other more complicated CGI work not covered by Hirota, but Yamamoto said that “eventually, we will have to do everything.” Right now, Hirota is focused on amplifying training and upgrading skills of its existing artists and is set to expand its workforce as the company begins hiring more people this month.

Hirota needs artists with maximum computer skills and expects marked improvement once they are employed (they admit to letting go of some artists when they couldn’t cope with quality requirements). More importantly, Yamamoto says, they have to be excited about the work.

With frames going so fast, the viewer might be hard-pressed to identify their work within the seamless whole. But the closing credits should say it all.

An outsourcing company doesn’t easily merit credit, says Yamamoto, because VFX companies who are members of unions in Hollywood are given priority.

It is for this reason that Hirota artists felt overwhelmed when they get recognized – individually and not just a group – as part of the hundreds of artists in the world collectively responsible for the almost 1,500 visual effects in G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra. The same feeling goes for the unique opportunity to be credited in Australia and Watchmen.

“Surprising and overwhelming,” says Shaun Portillo, a Fine Arts graduate of the University of San Carlos, upon seeing his name side by side with Hollywood’s resident VFX artists. “We invited family and friends to watch the films and asked them to wait for the credits,” he adds with a laugh.

Jean Jardeleza, a Psychology graduate of Silliman University in Dumaguete whose interest in digital art led her to Hirota, agreed. She says that the compensation is actually good, but the experience of being part of the Hollywood filmmaking industry is priceless.

Needless to say, more than just the cost advantage, the central attraction of an outsourcing business is quality. If anything, the show of confidence in the kind of work offered at Hirota is underscored in its line-up of projects. As stated in its IMDB.com filmography, the forthcoming high-profile films, wherein Hirota artists will be acknowledged individually and/or as a group, include the Angelina Jolie spy-thriller Salt (2010); the big screen adaptation of the best-selling novel Rum Diary (2010) starring Johnny Depp; the Nelson Mandela biopic Invictus featuring Morgan Freeman (2009); the George Clooney war comedy The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009), among others. 

To be sure, India and Thailand are still the countries enjoying most of the special effects outsourcing action in the Asian region. And the Philippines, through Hirota Paint Industries, still plays a very minor part in the whole picture. Indeed, there’s a lot of catching up to do. But as they say, there are no small roles in the movies. This is because the world of visual FX is becoming more complex and massive by the day, increasing the demand for more production capability. And you can expect our artists at Hirota to be a part in all of this.