From SA to Hollywood: How small Adelaide firm Rising Sun Pictures cracked Tinseltown
HOW did a tiny Adelaide company christened over a drink in a suburban pub become one of the most influential and innovative special effects companies in film?
HUGH Jackman’s latest Wolverine movie, X-Men Days of Future Past, has a comic scene in which the character Quicksilver stops time then zips around the room reorganising the kitchen in the Pentagon — US Defence headquarters — just the way he wants it.
The sequence, which lasts under two minutes, is just a small gag in the latest instalment of the hugely popular X-Men series, but it’s massively complicated. Fine water sprays down, vegetables and frypans fly through the air, bullets fire and characters flit along walls at hypserspeed.
It is just one of a show reel of amazing film moments from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings and Gravity brought to Hollywood by Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) and created in Pulteney Street.
The Quicksilver sequence took the company five and a half months to make and is the most multi-layered sequence they have worked on so far.
“There are lots of complex things we had to deal with that aren’t apparent when you first see it,” says RSP producer Ian Cope. “When it came out people were saying ‘that was excellent high-speed photography work’ and we just smiled politely and waited until it got to the point where we could go, ‘well that was us’.”
Rising Sun Pictures was founded in 1995 in Adelaide by cinematographer Tony Clark along with Gail Fuller and Wayne Lewis who named it over a drink at the Rising Sun Inn at Kensington. Their breakthrough came with the sci-fi thriller Red Planet that transformed Coober Pedy into the surface of Mars.
It was the Warner Brothers film that gave them an introduction to Hollywood. Through word of mouth it led in 2003 to The Core, another film about a dying Earth that involved a space shuttle re-entry sequence. In turn, that led to special effects on Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar-winning Gravity. The RSP sequence in which Sandra Bullock’s battered shuttle sheds burning debris as it re-enters the atmosphere earned them a nod at the Academy Awards where the film won an Oscar for its special effects.
“We were asked by Warner Brothers to bid for that — it took 12 to 14 months to get that sequence looking right,” says Cope.
“We didn’t get the actual Oscar, the VFX supervisor on the film did. They were the client but it’s really nice for us.”
In terms of Hollywood big time, Harry Potter in 2004 was another breakthrough which brought them work on five films in the series. They brought to life J.K. Rowling’s terrifying “Dementors”, the black shroud-like creatures that suck all hope from their victims.
“They were kind of off-leash so they had to be a bit more animated and nasty,” Cope says of the Dementors.
“We also had a big swarm of them attacking Hogwarts. It was fun, really nice to be part of it, especially because Harry Potter had a definite feel about it.”
Even as their success continues to build the team is committed to staying in Adelaide. To manage their overseas clients they have developed special software that allows them to videoconference with the US or UK on a shared active screen.
“This is our life,” says Cope. “Twice a week we are sitting with out clients saying ‘what do you think of this?’ It’s fun being able to talk to people, it’s like they’re here.”
As the operation grows, a second floor of office space is about to be taken over and the staff will double to about 160 over the next year. Recruits come from all over the world — about 45 different nationalities are represented — although RSP has worked with Flinders University to develop VFX training for entry level.
A career in the industry requires a highly specialised mix of computer software-based skills that bring together science and art.
A good eye is needed as the artists create an object — a knife, a carrot, a bench, a goblin, a forest — and then superimpose it into filmed live action. Camera position and movement, lighting and continuity must all be technically precise to produce a realistic effect.
“It’s a level of detail I had never seen before,” RSP VFX supervisor Tim Crosbie says of the Quicksilver sequence.
“Usually you can get away with it by motion blur or camera shake but we had to match every surface and show how every shadow fell.”
The high-profile work keeps coming. Without giving away any trade secrets, The Advertiser can reveal RSP is working on a host of unreleased blockbusterslike The Hunger Games Mockingjay Pt 1, Gods of Egypt, and Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner, largely shot in South Australia this year.
“We have a big sequence in that, can’t go into too much detail but it’s a pretty emotional scene and we created the effects and simulation for it,” says Cope.
“It was nice to be part of that, especially because it was shot here. Russell was reviewing the dailies and came to our theatre a few times so it was nice to get that sort of work and be able to contribute to such a big story.”
FILMS WITH RISING SUN PICTURES’ SPECIAL EFFECTS:
Red Planet
The Core
The Last Samurai
George of the Jungle 2
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
the final five Harry Potter films
Wolverine
Superman Returns
Blood Diamond
Charlotte’s Web
Australia
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The Hunger Games
Prometheus
The Great Gatsby
Red Tails
Green Lantern
Gravity
X-Men Days of Future Past
Yet to be released
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt1
Gods of Egypt
Pan
Tarzan
The Water Diviner
Deadline Gallipoli