It was early 2010, he likes to say, when Polish animator and visual artist Tomasz Bajinski pressured his friend Andrzej Sapkowski to make a film. Sapkowski is the author of the fantasy series “The Witcher”, and Bagiński – already nominated for an Oscar for his short film “The Cathedral” – dreamed of bringing the series to the big screen.
Among the early enhancements to the project were Platige Image, Polish animation, VFX and a post-production studio which Bagiński joined in 2004. When Netflix swooped for the rights to “The Witcher” in 2017, the company was tapped to carry out the production along with L.A. Hivemind-based. The Polish studio also became one of several houses to handle special effects for the series, earning an Emmy nomination for VFX work on what became one of Netflix’s biggest international hits.
“The Witcher” has proven to be not just a feather in the cover of Platige’s image, but fast-rising Polish light effects and post-production industry. Studios in the eastern European country are capturing a growing demand for remote post-production and visual effects work sparked by the pandemic, amid a surge in production worldwide as companies race to make up for lost time due to COVID-19.
“There’s more volume, for sure. It’s really visual,” says Carol Żbikowski, CEO of Platige Image. “The market is really hot right now.”
The biggest game-changer for the Polish industry has been the local production boom driven by Netflix and other streaming services. Earlier this year, the Los Gatos-based broadcasting giant announced a slate of 18 original Polish feature films and TV series and will unveil its new Central and Eastern European headquarters in Warsaw later this year.
“When Netflix came to Poland, they forced people to gain new knowledge,” says Kamil Rutkowski, CEO of Warsaw-based post-production company Black Photon. Broadcasting set a high standard for artistic standards in its productions, and in order to meet these demands it offered free tutorials to local studios while helping them adapt the workflow. “I think Netflix has done the most to educate the industry,” Rutkowski says. “Over the past five years, the industry has seen really fast growth in terms of skills.”
This growth is one of the reasons why this year the Polish Film Institute offered a $50,000 cash prize at US in Progress, an event held alongside the Polish American Film Festival that presents a selection of nearly half a dozen films. The American Independent is in the final stages of production. This year’s edition takes place in Wroclaw, Poland from November 9-11.
Along with $10,000 in kind prizes from leading Polish post-production companies, the PFI Prize will be handed over to one of the winning directors to be spent on post-production, image, sound and/or visual effects in Poland. It is a step towards “promoting independent small and medium-sized businesses [foreign] Producers need to get to know us and see for themselves what we can offer,” according to PFI Director Radosław Śmigulski, who indicated a 30% cash discount that could be applied to post-production work in the country.
Poland has a rich tradition of cinematography, and local cinematographers – supported by an influential union – have long pushed the industry to maintain strict standards. “They demand quality, and companies need to keep up,” says ukasz Ceranka, partner at Fixafilm in Warsaw and head of its digital recovery division.
The company has returned work for the likes of Orson Welles, Andrzej Wajda and Dario Argento and has collaborated with institutions including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and New York’s Film at Lincoln Center. Ceranka says Fixafilm was also the first post-production house in Poland — and one of the first in the world — to adopt the Academic Color Coding System (ACES), which has since become an industry standard for color management during film and television production.
American director Joe Sackett, whose “Homebody” won Best Debut Film this year at the Toronto Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, has received Fixafilm for post-production after winning an award in kind in the United States at the Progress event in 2020.
“They basically left the door open for us to tell them what we needed, and without fail to provide all of these things for us,” he says, including the film’s titles, credits, and DCP. “When we were in late post-production, I knew we could go to them for anything, and they would help us.”
American director Joe Sackett turned to Polish post-production company Fixafilm for his movie “Homebody”.
Courtesy of Killjoy
While the pandemic has been a boon to post-production homes around the world, as studios show a growing desire to do post-production work remotely, it has also fueled fierce competition among top visual effects artists. This competition, in turn, has led to higher prices in Poland, whose low wages and relatively low production costs have long been a big selling point, according to Obikovsky.
Although new post-production roles continue to enter the market, capacity is a challenge that threatens to slow the growth of the industry. “We won’t be able to do ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Avengers’ in Poland,” Rutkowski admits. “There aren’t enough people skilled in character animation.” He adds that many of the country’s top visual effects artists, instead They were criticized by the booming video game industry.
It is a problem that requires a radical rethink of how Polish artists are educated and trained. “There is no proper education for talents who only want to work in the film post-production industry,” says Alicia Jankarz, of the leading studio Orka in Warsaw. Rutkowski recently set up the Polish chapter of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the trade union that sets standards for industrial training around the world, because he was “looking for knowledge” he couldn’t find in Poland.
Expansion is the only logical solution – but that’s easier said than done. “Training visual effects artists is a long process. You can’t just fill in the blank so quickly,” says Ubikowski. Besides strengthening her Polish team, Platige Image has opened a studio in Los Angeles and is actively recruiting to conferences and industry events around the world, forming Foreign workers make up nearly 10% of its workforce – and it’s growing.
“The biggest challenge is finding the right people, not finding the right projects,” says Ubikowski. Laugh. “It’s a good problem.”
[ad_2]
