A trip to VES Awards Ceremony

On the eve of a major film awards ceremony in the world, VES Awards (the Oscar in the world of visual effects) held its ceremony in Los Angeles. Ukrainian delegation also visited this celebration: I’ve already told you that VFX created by POSTMODERN for the mini-series "Inseparable" got to the finals in two categories: "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program” and “Outstanding Created Environment in a Commercial or Broadcast Program”.

Although it hasn’t won any awards, guys were not disappointed and hold no grudge:

- Having watched the videos of all the nominees this year, we realized that we have a chance. But were ready for anything. So, it was not shameful to lose, - says Egor Borschevsky, CEO of POSTMODERN. - Honestly, we had a very high chance. Indeed. The graphics in "Inseparable" is no worse than the graphics in "Game of Thrones". And it's not just our opinion, our Western colleagues told us about it...But it’s not that easy for ordinary Ukrainian guys to win from such a famous project:  awards ceremony is a treaky thing , there are many nuances , many of which you find out on the spot.

- And how did you feel yourself at such a great event?

- Well, it was a big honor for us to get into the company of people who make the most outstanding things in the area of visual effects. We felt ourselves as a part of a huge industry, which employs a huge number of professionals. Not only 100 people in Ukraine and about 200 in Russia, but a huge world. Still it was very unusual experience...The people working there are older than us.  I'm 35, and there are people from the industry who are 50 and 60 years old. Nevertheless, they took us very seriously. We met with studio executives who have worked on such projects as  "2012", "The Day After Tomorrow", "White House Down"...They said: "You guys have a cool job". But the fact is that one can win a VES Award only with an outstanding project.

This year, despite all the lobby opinions and undercurrents, Alfonso Cuaron and his "Gravitation" gathered all the awards, and won almost in all the categories. It is a brilliant film in terms of visual effects. It is as earthshaking as were "Matrix", "Lord of the Rings" and "Avatar" in their days.

- You say that there 100 people in the industry. And 7 of them were at the ceremony, so 7% visited USA. Were those necessary expenditures?

- The fact is that the prize is awarded to people. And all who have traveled with us to VES were nominated, it is their merit. I think this is a great motivation for the team. People understand that while working in this company they can actually do something worthy of such a high award. For any artist in the world VES nomination or award is a ticket to any company in the world.

- Is there’s a room for Ukraine in this process?

- In LA we understood that there is a room for us. We’re interesting and we’re respected. They want to talk with us as our prices are lower than that offered by European studios. And quality of our product is highly competitive with the Indians and Chinese. Marc Weigert, CEO of Uncharted Territory, with whom we’ve talked at VES, said: "It’s unprofitable for me to work with them, because I have to use double or even triple quality control process".

However, we still can’t work on big projects. There’s a lack of staff. European company normally consists of 400-500 people. And here a company that has 50 employees is a large-scale one. On the other hand, we have higher efficiency. In Europe, they work with a huge stock of quality and lots of iterations. We always have underestimated budgets, and we still have to be both profitable as a company and effective as a creative team. When you ask a western solid composer: "How long have you been working on this or that shot?" - He says, for example: "For a year". And you realize that it takes about a month to work on your most complex shot, if it’s a big project - 2-3 months. You just can’t afford another timing, because you’ll immediately find yourself out of business. So we have to do wonders.

- So, there is a prospect of cooperation with Western studios?

- Yes. We are interesting, we can do it good, efficiently, quickly and creatively, we have an adequate management level. So we really hope that next year we will find ourselves nominated for VES. And maybe even win.