Interview with ONE MORE PRODUCTION (Creator of Pixels)

Interview with ONE MORE PRODUCTION (Creator of Pixels)
By Jeff Mottle


The latest viral video to pique the interest of the CG community, Pixels by Patrick Jean,  has now hit nearly 3 million views over at DailyMotion. Between their almost nonstop barrage of calls since its wide spread popularity, CGarchitect was able to sneak in a few moments to speak with Benjamin Darras, one of the owners and producers at ONE MORE PRODUCTION , the studio responsible for Pixels.  In our call, we learned that they are currently negotiating a deal with a major motion pictures studio to turn Pixels into a feature film.


Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

ONE MORE PRODUCTION  was  started three years ago by former BUF company employees.  While at BUF,  Benjamin Darras was a producer, and his business partner at ONE MORE PRODUCTION  , Johnny Alves,  a supervisor. Together they worked on Batman, Panic Room, and Speed Racer to name a few.  They co-founded ONE MORE PRODUCTION  to produce commercials, but reinvest some of their profits into the company to produce short films.  "We are all directors and we very much enjoy being able to direct projects." explained Benjamin.  "It's very important for us to keep a link between shooting and post-production. That why we call ourselves a studio and are called upon for our creativity and not just our technical abilities."

"There are between 15 and 20 people working in the studio and growing and growing!" Benjamin chuckles  "Everyone comes from different backgrounds. The oldest staff  members who are  in their mid-thirties did not have any 3d schooling as they there were no schools when they started. They came from one of the first generations of 3d artists and have backgrounds in fine arts, architecture and illustration. The newer generation have all gone to 3d schools from difference places in France. There are not many people in the industry from the first generation, but there are so many artists from the new generation.  We have an artist in our studio who is 23 and he was the only person from his school to find work out of 30 students in his class".


Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

Benjamin told us that even before the Pixels film, they received at least 4-5 calls every day from artists looking for work, but it very tough now as there are way too many artists on the market.

We asked about the trend of studios looking only for artists with at least 3-5 years production experience, and he responded that they are very much the same.   "The budgets are getting lower and lower and the time is getting lower and lower as well. We need people who are very efficient, and that is why we can't really spend time to train young artists and let them try out new things." explained Benjamin.  "Even though they are cheaper we just can't afford that, we need people who are really fast.  Even on longer projects the timelines are so tight, we know what has to be done in a half-day basis. Right now we're looking for people who have at least five years of experience. "

Internally, they were discussing their need for more experienced artists, and how  unfair it is for the younger generation, but Benjamin expressed concern with the skill sets that current students are learning. "They come out of school with a very large discrepancy in what we expect now and what they have been trained for".  When asked if he thought that this was a problem with the current training system Benjamin responded, "Yes definitely, at least in France. The new graduates expect really nice wages and only to work seven or eight hours a day. Back when I started,  being a 3d artist meant having absolutely no life and having shit pay",  he laughs. "In my company we are actually one of the best paying production companies in Paris right now, but we expect people to be invested into their work and they need to work very hard. When we worked at BUF company there were 400 artists and the guys out of 3D schools were paid 70 Euros a day. It was nonsense to us. 
But anyways, the new generation are not ready for the learning curve of a production company.  When they land in the company everything goes so fast, but they don't have the techniques to go fast. They are used of working on their short films in school for nine months, without any time pressure.  Although we sometimes see some nice portfolios, we can't even judge them because we know they've been created on a nine month scale.  As a result we can't use their skills except on very basic things like tracking or rotoscoping. It's a real shame, because we know they have more skills like rendering, but we can't use them as they are not fast enough."


Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

Johnny Alves, co-founder and Artistic Director at ONE MORE PRODUCTION,  began his studies in Architecture, so we wondered how this experience helped shape their company and their films. Benjamin explained, "His architecture background gives him the structure to work in a studio where a lot of discipline and long hours are required. His background is important as film production is very lengthy and can end up being very disorganized. When you're working on a team of six people 12 hours a day, pretty much seven days out of seven, it's hard to stay sharp and focused.  His architecture background allows him to stay sharp even when he is tired.  Also, because we specialize in photorealistic effects, his knowledge of physical materials and lighting are crucial. Coming from a 3d school you may not learn these skills as they focus more on the technical aspects of the pipeline."



Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

After getting a better feel for their studio, we queried further about the film Pixels itself. Benjamin explained that, "The idea for the Pixels film came up for a music video. Patrick Jean, the director for the music video, wrote the script, but we realized that the budget did not allow for that much work. It would have taken too long to make, but still we realized the great potential for this idea, so we kept working on it.  When we started storyboarding the ideas, we realized it would be great to shoot it in New York, so we sent him there to shoot it."

PIXELS by Patrick Jean from ONE MORE PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The film was shot entirely handheld on a Canon5D camera.  Locations were scouted and everything shot in two days. "We did not have any permits, which is why we used this camera as it looks like a still camera and not a film camera." explained Benjamin.  All of the editing for Pixels was done in Final Cut Pro and Maya was used for the 3d with mental ray for the rendering. Shake and Nuke were used for the compositing and it was finished on Flame.  Benjamin indicated that the workflow used for Pixels was very typical for most of their projects.


Storyboard for Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)
Click to Download the Full Storyboard

With the recent popularity of DSLR's in film making we asked if they were starting to use them in more of their own productions.  Benjamin  responded, "We don't use them for our commercials as it's still considered to be a bit cheap looking. Even though the quality is there, the client does not want to see a camera on a tripod when he is paying $500,000.  Out of the 12-15 music videos we have shot this year we've only used the 5D on one of them, but the DSLR is really starting to change how people are considering shooting films now. You get very good quality, almost cinema like, and for the price of renting a traditional film camera, you can buy a 5D."  
Those of you who followed the early rise in popularity of the Pixels film might have seen two versions floating around.  We were curious to know more about the different approaches to each, but as it turns out one of the larger production companies in Paris stole their video and put their own music and credits over the piece!  Patrick had been working with this company on a different project and they wanted to use the piece in their showreel. They took out the credits, added different music and posted it on the internet with links pointing to their own website. "They literally stole the film. They thought because they were so much bigger that we would not do anything, but we fought back and had all of the copies of the video removed online.  We had to hire people to take down all of the stolen videos from sites like YouTube for copyright infringement.  We hired peoplein  San Francisco, Paris and Taiwan to work around the clock to have all of these videos removed."


Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

With all great films, many often wonder what was the inspiration? We asked Benjamin what gets the creative juices flowing at  ONE MORE PRODUCTION. He stated a lot of their work is inspired by architecture, design and fashion. They mainly do their research on the internet, with websites like trendsnow. "We try to get together during lunch to show each other the latest work. We also spend about an hour every morning looking for new inspiration. We travel quite a lot as well. The artists are quite well paid and most spend about two months travelling each year."

 
In our final question, we asked what advice they could provide to aspiring film makers in our own industry.  Although Benjamin was not familiar with the work of many of the larger studios in architectural visualization, he thought it important to know a lot of different types of software.  "The new generation knows how to use software like Nuke, Blender, Maya etc., and I think that is what makes them very powerful, unfortunately, they are not fast enough". he explained.  "To know a lot of software is definitely the advice I would give. It's a lot easier to find work if you know how to edit with something like Final Cut Pro. The way we work here, and maybe it's not the same for every company, we try to get artists who can do everything. We give them one shot and they have to handle it from beginning to end.  In some companies one person will do the modeling and another the lighting or skinning, but this is not the way we work. Artistically and creatively it is more rewarding because you handle the shot and in the end it is your shot."


Pixels by Patrick Jean (ONE MORE PRODUCTION)

Looking forward however, he offers hope by suggesting there are potential new opportunities for companies and artists in our industry. "We used to do a lot of commercial for Nintendo, about two or three a month, and everyone needed a new location. Locations are very costly and to bring a lot of people on set is expensive. We really try to convince the clients that it can be very interesting to shoot the people on a greenscreen and use a 3d background.  I've seen architectural CG images that look exactly like photos. We don't have the time or software to create these types of images with very high resolution, but I think there is going to be a time when we are going to need a lot more 3d sets.  I think we will be able to use 3d sets in a lot of commercials. Having an architectural background will be very interesting I think. When you start to do this type of work, you can't use a normal artist, you need someone with an architectural background - someone who understands size and proportion and has an eye for it."