Geon studios recently soft launched in Mumbai and with it, the already prominent Indian VFX scenario has received yet another powerful boost. Just a look at the promoters names is enough to overwhelm, the studio being a joint venture between Sahara and Barrie Osborne, (producer – The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Water Horse, Face Off ), Michael Peyser, (producer – Speed2, Hackers, Matilda), Jon Labrie (VFX stalwart and former CTO, Weta Digital) and N. Madhusudhanan (Indian VFX stalwart & evangelist).
The studio has been set up with a state of the art facility at SEEPZ in Andheri, Mumbai and currently has a team size of 50 artists.
Here at FICCI Frames, the awe inspiring promoters of GEON in an exclusive conversation with Animation Xpress shared about how the studio came to be and their vision for it.
“GEON is going to be a VFX studio whose work will reflect its complete understanding of the filmmaking domain. I and Michael have been making films for the past 35 years, even Madhu and Jon gravitate towards storytelling. It is going to be a VFX facility that is anchored in the art of storytelling,” shared Barrie.
“We do our own movies and we want to use this creative facility to be our toolbox. We also want other filmmakers to be collaborators,” he added.
Michael Peyser added, “We want the studio to be fully active and let the artists grow, we will feed projects in, but we are keen on bringing intriguing and creative projects as well.”
“When I started what out was most interesting to me was working with as many talented directors as possible and to learn something new from each of them. Even though we have our own ideas, vision and films, working on others film makers‘ projects as well will only broaden the capability and range of our artists,” added Barrie.
Amongst the projects that Geon has worked on include 138 shots for The Warrior‘s Way which is produced by Barrie and is currently in post.
On being asked about India as a choice of location for the studio, Barrie shared “In the beginning when we first started out we were deliberate and methodical and we were analyzing who we wanted to do business with. At that point cost arbitrage was one of the factors, but by the time we set up the cost arbitrage was no longer the attraction, we found something much more lasting than the cost arbitrage in India that would transcend the momentary cost benefit and that was the talent, the actors, directors, the writers, and the artists as well.”
“India has such a great culture of Art and the art here is very different from that of the west. We are looking to involve this freshness of Indian art” he added.
An interesting thing that Jon Labrie pointed out was that while most VFX studios were stuck in the services mould, the idea at GEON was to explore content ownership as well. “There‘s a huge Film Industry in India and there is opportunity for us to look at co-production options in return for our participation in projects. That conversation is not possible to have in Hollywood but it is possible in India”
“Its not just about straight service VFX, the involvement can be right from doing shot break downs to pre viz, concept art to set supervision, to post, we would be involved in every single process to make the film look better” he added.
It has been years of effort and work on part of N. Madhusudhanan to realize his Hollywood dream, building relationships, and then more important, building credibility. “It doesn‘t stop with saying hello. You have to prove yourself, it‘s not an easy task and just the dream alone cannot take you to it, you have to prove yourself.”
“Now that we have started and have created expectations within the industry we want to bring in the projects and we are going to be involved in some very interesting ones, pretty soon.” He added.
Nurturing Talent
“We always motivate our artists and ask them “what do you want to be in the next five years from now, we think it‘s a responsibility we have in terms of nurturing their skills. It should feel like a university also” shared Madhusudhanan.
The effort is to build a creative atmosphere, an enjoyable workplace where there are constant challenging projects and enough experienced artists to guide the younger ones to evolve in their work as well as deliver the best quality work.
On LOTR.
On being asked, that while working on it, if he ever knew that LOTR was going to be this big as an Icon or as one of the all time top grosser globally? To which Barrie replied “You never know while working on your movie whether it‘s going to work or not. But you get a feeling about things and I got a good feeling about this project. When I first met Peter Jackson, he had been working on the film for a year, I was at Weta Workshop with him and I saw the wardrobe, the armour, the set designs, and I had seen a lot of great stuff, but when I was at Weta looking at all that had been done, that quality of craftsmanship I had never seen ever before. It was extraordinary.”
“The enthusiasm and the passion of the team working on it was remarkable. From day 1 of the early development to the delivery of the movie, they were trying to make the movie better at all steps and in all possible ways. We started shooting on 10 October 1999 and then we went to Cannes in May 2000 and we showed 25 minutes of the film. I remember anonymously sitting behind two british journalists and from the response, I knew that we had a movie that was definitely going to work. I must tell you that with audiences you never know”
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As CTO of Weta, Jon Labrie was also part of the Lord of The Rings in fact he was already involved on the project for a better part of the year before Barrie joined in.
“Weta was a small company and we were not sure about whether we were going to be able to make it through. Tolkein could have been cheesy and bad. Until, for me personally and it‘s true for quite a few of the team members, the first dailies came out and we saw this very moving scene between two actors and there was no dry eye in the room. We knew it worked for us and we were relieved, it also put even more pressure on our shoulders, we needed to ensure that we could pull it off.” Shared Jon.
“Out there in New Zealand and in the studio, we were in a way insulated from the rest of the world. When the film released and started becoming big, we didn‘t understand how big, a deal it was.” He added.
The best part is that you can‘t plan the best parties, they just happen spontaneously. The right people, the right place, the right time.
As the conversation on Geon and about LOTR drew to an end, the last line kept ringing in the ears of your‘s truly, …. The best parties are not planned, the right people, the right place, the right time…
And just like Barrie, got a good feeling about LOTR, your‘s truly gets that feeling about Geon.
