China is an amazing country – with massive potential and an extremely determined visual effects community. Last month Fxguide was Live in Shangahi, for 3 days of compositing lecturing and training with the help and sponsorship of ChinaDV, which is China’s leading visual effects community internet company. We spoke to some of the talented artists in Shanghai and explored a community facing massive cracked software issues. Of course it is not only the visua
Shanghai is an amazing city, Giorgio Armani recently called it “the world’s most talked about city”. It is a city of contrasts, in a country that is exploding with potential. China is growing at an incredible rate, but it is starting from well behind the west. The average salary for a normal worker in China’s two biggest cities has just reached a level experts cite as the break point for the start of car ownership. We arrived in one of the hippest cities in China, built on the Yangtze River with 16.7 million people, most of whom seemed to be learning to drive on the exact section of any road we tried to walk across while we were there. This is a city on the move and you get the feeling you need to either jump on board or stay well out of the way.
The average salary for a 3D artist is about US$3,500 and for a compositor closer to US$4,000 per annum. With lower salaries and an increasingly sophisticated and educated visual effects workforce, Shanghai is often pointed to as a possible outsourcing location for future animation and visual effects work. While it is behind India is some respects for hi-tech outsourcing reputation, the visual effects community, and key plays such as ChinaDV’s Song Lin Hou have a real vision for where China can go and how to get there. Song Lin Hou runs ChinaDV with over 100,000 online members, – working along side SFS Digi-Media, he says education and senior training as key to China competing internationally and he was personally behind organizing this years conference at which FxGuide presented over three days. While most of ChinaDV ‘s members are After Effects users, the company services all levels of the industry from student to high end film professionals. ChinaDV about to start publishing original visual effects magazines and in depth compositing books aimed at China’s developing high end market.
In visual effects the country is split between Bejing and Shanghai, we were lucky enough to work with August Zhuang from Shanghai Film Studios Digital Media (SFS Digi-Media). August Zhuang is one of the brightest lights in a new generation of extremely talented artist who are spearheading local film work. SFS Digi-Media is partly owned by Shanghai Film Studios, one of the countries oldest film studios, and completely government owned. Walking around their facility it is not hard to be impressed, At there major studios in Shanghai they have a standard world class set of infernos, flames, film scanners, motion capture, 3D scanners, sound mixing suites and alike, but it is the quality of the art work produced by people such as August, and his fellow contributors especially in the matte painting department and concept art departments that shows the true potential of blending East and Western aesthetics and craft.
Shanghai Film Studio was founded in 1949 and has grown into one of the three largest film studios in China. For more than 50 years the studio has made over 600 films and been awarded over 500 prizes in domestic and international film festivals. In 1996, the Shanghai Film and TV Group was founded, and it is now one of the countries largest media companies consisting of Shanghai Studio, Shanghai Film Lab, Shanghai Film Development Company and Holiday Inn Crown Plaza Shanghai. In 1999 this group, under the direction of General Manager Yongde Zhu, opened a new 62-acre modern equipped facility outside Shanghai for tourists and film production. Mr. Yongde Zhu has now retired from the position of General Manager of SFS in 2002, but now he is the chairman of the board of SFS Digi-Media. SFS Digital Media shareholders include Shanghai Film Studio, Yangpu Xinjiuzhou Industrial, Shanghai Media and Entertainment Investment. Shanghai Oriental Broadcasting and Television Technology Company, and Shenzhen Venture Capital.
Since its establishment as the digital effect production division in Shanghai Film Group Corporation, SFS Digi-Media has been providing digital vfx production services for many movies, TV programs, game software, and commercials. The quality of its production and service has won good reputation in the field and begins to draw international attention. SFS Digi-Media is one of the key companies leading China media industry moving forward with the concept of advanced management, sophisticated technology, original creativity, and high quality service.
In the compositing department of SFS Digi-Media August Zhuang’s team run After Effects, Shake, 3 Flames and one Inferno. But China is well known for its contrasts and in a country as huge as China, SFS Digi-Media represents approximately 1/4 of all the legal flames in the entire country. Some estimates place the entire population of Smoke and Flame systems in all of China at only 24, evenly split between editing and effects. This is due to the enormous availability of cracked versions of Flame. With some investigation while we were there, Fxguide found we could buy a Flame on Octane 2 in Shanghai for US$10,000, with better service and 24 hour phone support than Discreet supplies. The only difficulty is buying the digital video output cards for the Octane 2 which are in short supply in China. Discreet was not alone in its troubles, we could also easily buy Shake, After Effects, in fact almost any visual effects software extremely easily in China. Issues of copyright shouldn’t overshadow the honest talent we discovered while lecturing, the audience was informed, empowered and dedicated.
The Xintiandi and Bund districts are retail meccas, by 2008 the city will boast the world’s tallest building, the week after we left Shanghai hosted the countries first Formula 1Grand Prix, Bejing is gearing up for the 2008 Olympics to be broadcast in HD, (- unlike the disappointing global feed from Athens 2004 that was a pathetic 4:3 standard def). And by 2020 China will be the most visited country in the world says the World Tourism Organisation..