Walking tall: Neytiri and Jake return in Avatar 2. Photo / Supplied
Walking tall: Neytiri and Jake return in Avatar 2. Photo / Supplied
The ebbs and flows of the film and television industry in New Zealand have kept local businesses on their hairy toes since Frodo and co first burrowed their way into the countryside.
What began as a cottage industry that popped up to make the most of Hollywood’s attention hadgrown into an internationally recognised part of NZ’s economy.
During 2022′s annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) conference, globally recognised film and TV executives gave a glimpse into how cloud technology is going to globalise the industry and what that might mean for NZ. The two key aspects are highlighted by two of the biggest productions of recent years.
More power, more availability
During the AWS re:Invent 2022 conference, the potential of the cloud was outlined by Dave Conley, executive visual effects producer at Wētā FX, and Jon Landau, a producer on the highest-grossing movie ever, Avatar. The first of four planned sequels, Avatar: The Way of Water, is the most computer-intensive movie ever made.
When it came time to render shots, meaning to combine all the footage, sound and effects into a single file, Conley said he and the team at Wētā quickly realised that the computer power of their own data centre wouldn’t be enough to get the film out on time.
They worked with AWS to take any available capacity out of the cloud provider’s Sydney region.
After chewing through that, they grabbed what they could from Asia-Pacific, then North America.
Lord of the Rings TV series producer Ron Ames (L) and Wētā FX's Dave Conley (R) spoke at AWS' annual conference. Photo / BusinessDesk
One thread hour is the equivalent of a ‘standard’ server in a datacentre running at maximum for one hour. The new Avatar movie took 3.3 billion thread hours to complete.
That is an extreme example of an extreme movie, and the cloud as it’s now still has technical and capital barriers. But as tools get built and become more accessible, visual effects-heavy production could become much more accessible. While cloud-based systems may be globalising access to post-production companies, it’s also making high-level film techniques more accessible, even to studios in remote countries like NZ.
Globalised production ‘the future of film’
For Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series, producer and Hollywood visual effects veteran Ron Ames and his team decided from the start that it would be a cloud-based production. “The future of film-making is cloud-based technology,” he said in a conference session describing the process.
Ames explained in detail how it all came together and although the technical details are finicky and complex, what it all boiled down to is that it allowed teams around the world to access and work on everything and anything that could be stored digitally. He described this as the globalisation of film production.
A cloud-based approach meant the various companies working on the film could continue their work during the pandemic lockdowns because everything was available and live online.
It required the 12 vendors across the globe to standardise things and integrate their own systems into AWS services, but the result was that all digital assets were automatically tagged with any associated information, or metadata, and kept up-to-date for whoever needed to work on them.
There was no longer a need for people to be in the same room – or even in the same country.
NZ’s industry
While the first season of The Rings of Power was filmed in NZ, when the pandemic lockdowns hit, Amazon’s production wing decided to take the show to the UK for season two.
There’s no getting around it: this was a loss for those involved in the on-set side of film-making in NZ.
But does the cloud technology used in post-production, from visual effects to editing, help rebalance those scales somewhat?
“Yes, yes, 100 per cent yes,” Ames said. “It is already happening.”
Walking tall: Neytiri and Jake return in Avatar 2. Photo / Supplied
Wellington’s Wētā FX has already made a name for itself as an international post-production powerhouse, but it’s not the only NZ company that has made a name for itself in that space.
Ames named NZ success story Moxion, recently acquired by Autodesk, among several local companies that are seeing global success thanks to cloud computing and their established relationships with Hollywood.
“Cause and FX is a fantastic visual effects company. We helped develop its pipeline so, currently, I am bidding it on two other jobs,” Ames said.
“I would use those teams that I used on season one [of The Rings of Power] again and again. “I’ve got a show going in Australia and I’m bringing in The Rebel Fleet to do the dailies, another NZ company, because they’re fantastic, and Rebel Fleet is talking about working in London.
“So, yes, the answer is there is opportunity everywhere. It’s skill and artistry, and the great thing about NZ is because you’re a bunch of number eight wires, you’re able to bring a unique perspective that we truly appreciated and learned from.”
Yes, NZ will be competing on a global level but, thanks to our decades-long history of Hollywood-scale productions, NZ is entering the world of cloud-based production with a head start.
Ben Moore attended AWS re:Invent 2022 in Las Vegas courtesy of AWS.
