Technicolor special effects company coming to Adelaide, but what does it mean?

THE Hollywood company that created colourisation is now a hi-tech special effects player — and it’s coming to Adelaide with the promise of 500 new jobs at a new VFX Academy. But why is this such a big deal for SA, and what does it mean for existing businesses like Rising Sun Pictures?

• 500 jobs as global special effects company expands to Adelaide

HOLLYWOOD visual effects giant Technicolor — the 100-year-old colourisation company that gave Judy Garland her sparkling ruby slippers — is on the hunt for an old warehouse to convert into a VFX studio to service exploding international demand for movie special effects.

Within five years the $26 million centre will employ at least 500 people, possibly more, at the 3000-plus square metre hi-tech site that should be up and running by June.

On Tuesday, Premier Jay Weatherill, in campaign mode handing out popcorn at the Capri Theatre, was joined by the French-American global head of Technicolor, Frederic Rose, who confirmed the choice of Adelaide for its southern hemisphere hub had been two years in the making.

Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman.

The state will invest $6 million and late last year uncapped its post-production and VFX rebate while in discussions with Technicolor about what it needed to come here.

“They understood what we wanted,” Technicolor’s Los Angeles-based chief operating officer, Nathan Wappet said.

“We laid out what we wanted to do and what would entice our clients to want to come to South Australia.”

Mr Rose said the company, French-listed but with headquarters in Los Angeles, was an international VFX provider to Hollywood with recent films including the multiple Oscar-nominated fantasy The Shape of Water, Wonder Woman, and The Jungle Book which was almost fully digital.

The company employs 15,000 people at 50 sites including Paris, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Shanghai and New York, reflecting the explosion in demand for visual effects.

“Hollywood budgets are not really changing fundamentally and increasingly producers in studios are relying on special effects,” Mr Rose said. “In our business, we need more production capacity.”

A scene from Blade Runner 2049, for which effects were created by Technicolor.

Technicolor will rebrand its Adelaide arm as Mill Film and will pitch for high-end medium-scale work of around 400 to 600 visual effects shots, leaving the most complex work to its NBC arm.

Mr Rose denied Mill Film’s arrival would compete with the successful Adelaide company Rising Sun Pictures, which employs almost 200 people in Pulteney St and won an Academy Award nomination for X-Men: Days of Future Past.

A scene from fantasy The Shape of Water.

“Rising Sun is a great company and a great brand,” he said. “We are not out there to compete particularly with Rising Sun. We have our customer base and we will be bringing new business to South Australia.”

Rising Sun Pictures managing director Tony Clark said Technicolor’s arrival in Adelaide would strengthen the local special effects industry, rather than harm it.

“We need more places in town who are developing talent and bringing talent in so in the medium to long term it is an incredibly positive thing,” he said.

“We are going to be growing as well, they are going to be growing, and the market is big. We are not in competition for work against each other.”

But Mr Clark warned Technicolor the federal clampdown on skilled migration 457 visas would make it hard to bring in people for particular jobs while Australia was a net exporter of talent in the visual effects field.

Other software and tech companies were also being affected.

“One of the greatest threats to us in the short-term is that we are both unable to source the labour that we need from offshore,” he said.

Mr Clark said tighter restrictions at the federal level were causing delays and uncertainty and were hampering RSP’s ability to grow.

“Every year we export plenty of people into this space but we cannot import as many as we need to backfill that,” Mr Clark said.

A scene from The Jungle Book, which was virtually all digital. Its special effects were created by Technicolor.

“The tightening-down on 457 visas at a federal level is having a really adverse effect on tech type companies like us and our ability to grow.”

Mr Rose expects to bring in a core group of about 15 to 20 people who would recruit and train a local base before returning to their homes. The jobs on offer would be aimed at university graduates who combine technical skill with artistry.

“We need young people, you don’t train someone at 45 to enter this industry,” Mr Rose said. “You start at 22 or 23 at the latest.”