Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we’ll shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking visual effects powerhouse Union VFX, an independent outfit based in London and, more recently, Montréal, which has spent the last 15 years quietly building a reputation for delivering some of the most seamless and invisible visual effects across the film and television spheres. We sit down with three of their heads to talk about how the business has grown, why it’s important to involve VFX teams at early stages and what’s next for the company.
The best visual effects are the ones that you don’t notice, the ones that blend seamlessly into the storyline and bring the audience deeper into the world of the storyteller. For instance, if you tuned into Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi feminist series The Power earlier this year, the visuals of young women who develop the power to create electricity in themselves with their blood vessels pulsating under their skin before sparks flew from their body, felt real and almost tangible. And the company behind these deftly executed visual effects is Union VFX, a London and Montreal-based outfit that has been quietly building a reputation for delivering some of the smoothest and most invisible visual effects in the industry.
“On The Power, one of our main briefs was to make ‘the power’ not like a superhero power but with an organic, natural effect and that was really difficult,” says Union Managing Director Lucy Cooper. “There’s so much nuance to how you do that and the work we did probably passed you by but would have an impact on how you consumed the footage, with little pulses coming down the women’s veins to the tips of their fingers before ‘the power’ is actually visible. It all required clever approaches that took weeks and months of R&D and looking at ways of making it.”
Founded by Adam Gascoyne and Tim Caplan in 2008, Union has been the sole VFX studio behind a raft of esteemed film and television projects including The Power, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. The company also worked closely with Danny Boyle’s creative team to deliver short films for the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.
It’s also worked on Netflix series The Crown, Disney+’s Moon Knight and upcoming projects include Yorgos Lanthimos’ highly anticipated Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, with Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott and Claire Foy, Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn and The Pigeon Tunnel, a documentary about author John Le Carré. “These are projects that are really story-driven but possibly not what people would consider visual effects films,” says Cooper.
This latest slate, say Caplan, Gascoyne and Cooper, is emblematic of everything Union has spent the last 15 years building: a nimble and forward-thinking VFX house that is “trying very much to be a part of the storytelling process.”
“We’re experienced filmmakers and it’s been slow for people to come round to the idea of this way of thinking but the earlier we are joined up with every department, the better the results, the further the budget goes and the greater the film will be,” says Caplan. “But generally, people are much more aware of this now.”
Indeed, the post-production and visual effects sectors, whilst hugely important to the final versions of film and television series, have long been considered an afterthought on the trajectory of a film with cinema purists tubthumping the idea that visual effects can take away from the realness of a project.
But for Union, it’s proud of working on a slate of projects that it considers to be “untraditional VFX movies.”
“I don’t think you can really pigeonhole VFX into one type of film,” says Gascoyne. “There probably aren’t many films made without some sort of visual effects now, and often these are very invisible things that take a team as big as a film production crew to create these things that just seamlessly drop into the background of shots. It’s not always the big blockbuster, tentpole films that use VFX. Now the industry is using the technology to facilitate the storytelling, which is really what is at the center of everything we do.”
Toni Collette stars in ‘The Power’
Prime Video
Humble beginnings
Gascoyne and Caplan had both worked at some of the UK’s biggest VFX houses including Cinesite (where they first met), Framestore and The Mill and had experience working across a raft of major projects such as Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, the first few instalments of the Harry Potter franchise, Mamma Mia! and Slumdog Millionaire. Troubled by the “top-heavy management” at many of these companies, the duo decided to join forces in 2008 and form Union with the goal of “merging the creative and the technical.”
“We wanted to remove a lot of the political levels that were at bigger companies and cut to the chase and deal directly with the creatives on film and television, so it would be much easier and cleaner to manage,” says Caplan.
“We thought about how we could take all of the best bits of what we’d learned across the last 10 years and try and blend them into a company that we can control with clients that we had already started building relationships with prior to that point,” says Gascoyne. “That was the genesis of the idea – we wanted to come up with a different way of approaching things on a different scale.”
Caplan adds, “We had strong ideas about how things could be done better and it’s those ideas that are still as true today as they were back then. It’s very much the same ethos and same mentality that we’ve grown with.”
Union hired esteemed VFX supervisor Simon Hughes as Creative Director in 2012, and The Foundry former marketing exec Cooper as Managing Director in 2016. Cooper recalls admiring Union’s work from its early days and was particularly impressed by the company’s early usage of composite tool Sneak.
“They were building a pipeline in the UK that was really interesting in how the artists were making use of the technology that was available at the time,” she says.
At present, Union has 140 employees across its London and Montreal branches (the majority are in London), of which nearly 40% are female employees, a huge percentage when compared to its competitors in the growing sector.
“The visual effects world is growing and that requires more artists to do it, which is a very understandable and tangible thing,” says Caplan. “You know that you need to get through a body of work within a schedule with ‘x’ number of artists but what actually supports those artists and everything that sits around that is communication about what’s needed and production, administrative and editorial teams that surround that and support them. That’s the thing that has allowed us to become the company that we have evolved into.”
Gascoyne agrees. “For us, it’s about keeping a very good, core team that we grow from both the artists side and production side and knowing what our strengths are and playing to those. We’ve had great success of retaining good people for long periods of time and we really focus on that.”
Next steps
As production budgets crunch and inflation rises in many countries, producers – whether they be on the indie, studio or streaming side – have realized the importance of getting involved in conversations with VFX houses earlier than they would have previously done. This way of working has been an organic and fruitful one for Union, which sees a lot of repeat business from top producers and directors such as McDonagh, Boyle, Kevin McDonald and Stephen Frears.
“We always look to solve everything in camera first,” says Caplan. “Our starting point is always to say how it’s best not to use us and talk through production teams on how they can get everything they need on camera. Then we can step in and give you what you need if it’s not there. I think that’s always the best approach really because everybody wants to get what’s real and then augment it and then use us to solve those problems. It’s a cleverer way of using their budgets.”
Gascoyne notes that many of their repeat clients will involve Union at first or second draft stages of scripts. “This enables us to identify challenges that they have initially and often we can come on to projects before other departments are on board. We encourage people to come to us as early as possible. Getting involved in a director’s recce when they are looking for locations enable us to move them through and help.”
“The more we’re treated like another creative department, the better the outcome for everyone,” adds Cooper. “I think we can offer a large amount of problem solving alongside those departments.”
After being based in London’s Soho district since its inception, Union expanded its reach to Canada earlier this year when it opened a new office in Montreal. “We’ve always been keen to explore it,” notes Caplan, who adds that they can now also tap into Canada’s 25% tax incentive (in addition to the UK’s 25% incentive).
“Having an office there will broaden our appeal long-term,” says Caplan. “It gives clients the option to work in both countries, but they can still work with our team. It’s a win-win in that respect. Plus, it broadens our horizons, and it will be great to build our team out there.”
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, ‘Poor Things’
Searchlight Pictures
The AI question
When it comes to utilizing new technologies available to the sector, Union is certainly at the forefront of any advancements. They are unthreatened by the hot button topic of AI and view its entry into the market as a tool that can facilitate efficiencies in their jobs.
“We’re definitely investigating what’s possible with AI,” says Gascoyne. “I think it would be naïve not to think it was going to be a part of the future or many aspects of all industries. But we’re looking at ways it can facilitate with things and take away some of the more mundane tasks and free up people to do more interesting work. It’s more about finding efficiencies and using technologies rather than replacing people.”
Cooper adds, “Filmmaking doesn’t stand still. The conversation about AI now is almost as if nothing else is going to change and AI will take over everything. But, in our experience, technology only evolves things and then, everyone’s ambitions evolve alongside whatever is happening on the tech side. So, with every kind of deficiency, we get new problems and challenges or more ambitious and creative ideas. For us, we see it as a bit of an evolution that we’re not expecting to disappear. We’re expecting to grow with whatever comes along and expand our horizons as opposed to depleting them.”
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