People, Pixels and Production

Last week was our first anniversary! Modus was born on paper July 27th, 2007. On August 1st, we were signing the lease for the huge space that became our new studios.

Where we are after our first steps:

• Our indoor setup is not totally complete, we have to work with our production schedules. Keeping track of our electrical needs is a challenge, with hardware getting in at a fast pace. Extension cords are a start-up company’s best friends.
• There are 30 of us now working full time. Our original goal was to have 25 people up and running during the first year, so we’re on track.
• With a few smaller projects, we are working on three features that are spread over 8 months.  Getting these bigger projects on board took a bit longer than expected, but we got up to speed very quickly.
• Our start-up financing is finally all spent. It was quite hard to make all our investment funds working together, with our financial partners having very different calendars and methods. We are now in our 2nd wave of financing to continue our growth.

With a year in business behind us, 30 employees and a good amount of production in our studios, we’re definitely not a start-up anymore. Modus is now a real (albeit young) business. Thanks everyone for your support and encouragements!

Next post will be from Siggraph 2008 in Los Angeles!

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If you don’t know who Dave Rand is, then you’re not up to date with the VFX community in Montreal. Dave is a VFX supervisor that has been turning a lot of heads recently as a self-made spokesperson for the 100 former artists of Meteor studios. His crusade about paychecks for the last weeks of work at the company before its bankruptcy has appeared in newspapers and magazines such as La presse, Variety, Playback and The Hollywood Reporter to name a few. His post on CGsociety has generated a huge amount of traffic and the thread is still going strong.

He is the guest in the first of a 3-part podcast over at fxguide.com about the state of labour in the digital effects industry. As usual, Fxguide has produced a fine segment and Dave’s view on our business is very insightful.

I agree with him that our industry is in its infancy, and that we are at a turning point where business models have to be rethinked to become more refined, structured and profitable. I’m far from being a business mogul, but I hope that as an experienced professional turned new company owner I can contribute to the progress of our field of work. I wish him well on his campaign.

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Ubisoft Campus on Notre-Dame street in Montreal.

Last Friday I had the privilege to speak at Campus Ubisoft in front of over 100 students in video game development and 3D animation. My conference was part of their course “ exploration of the industry “ where professionals from the video games and digital effects world come by for a chat about their careers, their goals and of course the state of the industry.

For my own presentation I talked about my steps in VFX, our setup of Modus FX and some key points about getting a job in the industry. The setting was very simple and informal and lucky for me the students were very engaged (for two hours!) and kept asking relevant questions; I like a dynamic crowd.

I enjoyed very much my first visit to the Campus. Many thanks to Ubisoft for inviting me.

 Part of the crowd as they were settling in. Yes, that’s a very fine looking Vectrex console sitting up in front. At least they know their gaming history…

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One thing I’m learning these days is to re-arrange my schedule; blog writing is one of the many things I’m desperately trying to find time for.

My associates and I were told two things by our management advisor about starting up a business

• Every few months, our responsibilities and typical workday will completely change;
• The pace of our business day will constantly go faster.

And he was right. Our first few months were all about arranging our studio: ripping old carpets, painting walls and getting a few chairs. Then, setting up accounting practices and business development strategies. Followed by buying our first pieces of hardware. Now we are balancing production calendars, staff hours and long-term budget predictions. Hey, at least it means we are in business.

Trying to set up a decent weekly schedule is hard, since our priorities are constantly evolving. My point is, yes, it’s been two weeks without a blog post and I’ll try to get back on track.

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Okay, so we have computers, contracts and staff, so we just work on our projects and cash in, right? Not quite. An important part of running a business is making sure you keep it running. So even though we have a filled calendar with money coming in for the next few months, what happens after that? That’s when you need business development.

Business development is anything and everything related to market opportunities, sales activity and business model design. Sounds very boring and not very VFX-ish, but it really means simple things like keeping up to speed with what is going on in our industry and look up what film productions are moving forward.

All this is part of our management coaching, where we are monitored by our consultant on a weekly basis. As soon as we started getting sound contracts, we knew that it would be crucial to have external support for business training. Making sure your bank account is in good shape and you have potential sales lining up in the not-so-distant future is important for any well established company, even more so with a start-up like ourselves since cashflow is at a minimum. It sounds obvious, but in the midst of running a business, it takes a lot of determination to step back and look at the big management picture.

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Sorry for the lack of posts, but the new year sure started off with a bang. We’re going through quite a few bids, which is taking a lot of our time. Yes, in fact it’s good news. I should be traveling for a shooting very soon, which should give time to put this blog back on track.

As for our start-up process, balancing finances, construction, hardware and client relations is tricky, but still doable with the correct attitude. We have started getting some management counseling, I’ll write about it soon.

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We knew that a key aspect of our success was to fill up our production calendar as soon as possible. We decided to set up strategies for short term (end of 2007) and medium term (early 2008) prospects.

Short term pitching (i.e. right now) requires a lot of work. It is fairly easy to present our company to possible clients and partners in the Montreal region and cold calling current projects in production. The process went well and the feedback was great, but it took a lot of our time with numerous daily visits. Autumn is not the best season to get involved in VFX projects and last November has been pretty awful for the CG/VFX community in Montreal.

2008 is looking much better, and we have been following up on a few projects for early next year. For longer productions, the important issue is to build confidence in the course of a few meetings while demonstrating your know-how. Our very large studio space helped us show our potential as well.

Our calendar is definitely shaping up after a rather slow start and a few delays the past few weeks. We’ll finally be more into pixels and less into 2×4, accounting reports and city permits.

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The last part of our first wave of financing concluded with a positive letter from the Quebec Minister of the MDEIE (hurray for acronyms). All our financing was intertwined, so this means we’re now very much in business. It will still take a few days to sort out all the contracts, proof of financing and purchase orders, as well as produce financial summaries so we can get our funds. We’re counting the days…

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