An article on the Australian digital post-production industry interviewing Animal Logic's Director of Technical Operations, Xavier Desdoigts.
The Australian digital post-production industry is hot property these days, since local visual effects artists received Academy Award recognition in 2000, for their work on The Matrix. That film provided the canvas to showcase the depth of talent here in Australia, according to Animal Logic's Director of Technical Operations, Xavier Desdoigts.
'This film is a credit to each of the designers, animators, compositors and programmers who worked with (VFX Supervisor) John Gaeta,' Desdoigts told Artbeat.
'It was not only an accomplishment in visual realisation but technical innovation in software development. We're proud of our team and obviously very happy that a film with so much Australian involvement has been so successful. It's encouraging for the growth of local production industries.'
He told Artbeat the Australian film industry relied largely on innovation due to the necessity of meeting high production values on low and high budgets.
'The industry as a whole is geared to stretching available production dollars and capitalising on our talent and technological knowledge,' he said.
'It is no accident that Australian directors, cinematographers, actors and crews are held in high esteem by filmmakers worldwide. The talent of our people is the industry's greatest strength and this has been proven over many years as well as more recently on high profile projects such as Dark City, Babe: Pig in the City, and The Matrix.'
Desdoigts said change was extremely rapid in the new digital age, with the visual effects industry in particular experiencing dramatic technological advances.
'The need to remain current has meant not only buying new "outside" solutions but also fostering a talented team internally,' he said.
'Animal Logic's research division supports the film, commercial, TV areas with systems administration services, technical and software support and software development. It is this intellectual property and proprietary knowledge that enables the company to develop the technology to its full potential, rewriting the technology not the idea.'
Technological change has made it easy for companies such as Animal Logic to stay in Australia.
'We use a variety of methods, including a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site, to transmit images to companies overseas,' Desdoigts said.
'We try to bring our own expertise to each project. Animal Logic is a design-led company. It's only now that the industry is really catching on to what this means. Effects design is a collaborative process and technicians are themselves creative.'
Animal Logic Film has recently finished work on Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. Its television division is just about to commence a third season of Farscape, in conjunction with Henson Productions.
'The growing preoccupation with "all things digital" opens up a host of new opportunities for a company like Animal Logic. The Internet, HDTV and interactive media will create increasing demand for high quality, scalable digital content and we're perfectly primed to accommodate this.'
Desdoigts was one of a few representatives of the Australian post-production industry lobbying the Commonwealth Government recently for extra national bandwidth. Enhanced bandwidth would improve digital transfer capacity, enhancing the ability of digital practitioners to more easily transfer their material internationally.
The Government recognises Australia's world-class status in the film post-production sector. Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, hosted two forums under the banner First Past the Post, for the film post-production industry in Melbourne and Sydney late last year.
The events successfully brought together key post-production companies, industry organisations and government to explore opportunities for the sector to work together to fully exploit new technologies in a rapidly changing film production environment.
Debate at the events was lively and generally concentrated around the availability, cost-effectiveness and reliability of telecommunications bandwidth. This is a key issue facing the sector, which has unique bandwidth needs in an increasingly digital international film production environment that requires production and post-production companies to quickly send and receive large packages of data throughout Australia and overseas.
Desdoigts says he found the recent post-production forums useful.
'It was good because we were able to bring a lot of the big players together and realised that we have a lot to gain by having an industry approach to some of our problems and that we are all interested in growing our share of the international market,' he said.
| 
