“Oh my goodness. Thank you to the members of the Academy for this amazing award,” celebrated Paul Lambert upon hitting the stage in front of a star-filled audience in Hollywood late last month.
The former visual effects supervisor at Double Negative Ltd. (DNEG) had just accepted his latest Oscar for work created primarily by his team in Vancouver for sci-fi blockbuster Dune. DNEG has taken home six of the last eight Oscars for VFX, with the Vancouver crew accounting for half of those wins.
Last month’s Oscar came amid DNEG Vancouver’s latest hiring spree, which has scooped up 140 workers since October for both its VFX operations and new animation studio.
Boasting of yet another Academy Award seems unlikely to hurt its pitch to prospective employees, even as global competitors like Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) and Weta FX Ltd. also swoop into the city to recruit for their new local studios.
The pandemic-era surge of global capital flooding into Vancouver’s tech ecosystem has created more than a dozen unicorns in the past two years. But beyond the exploding values of b2b software or biotech firms, it’s also resulting in significant growth for B.C.’s creative tech sector, including VFX and animation.
“It’s just fantastic. Vancouver has done such a great job,” Stu Farley, general manager of DNEG Vancouver, told BIV. “We have a very rich quality of artists here that’s layered deep through the education [system] all the way through to very senior talent.”
Its current headcount sits at 500 workers and it’s continuing to hire.
Just weeks before DNEG revealed plans for its new animation studio last summer, parent company Prime Focus Ltd. had secured a US$250 million equity investment from Novator Capital Advisers.
And plans to raise even more capital emerged this past January when DNEG announced it would go public via a deal with special acquisition company (SPAC) Sports Ventures Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq:AKIC). The SPAC deal, which is expected to close before the end of September, values DNEG at about US$1.7 billion.
This comes at a time when competition for talent is ramping up.
Walt Disney Animation Studios launched an office in the city earlier this year for work focused on long-form series to be featured on its Disney+ streaming service.
And Weta FX Ltd. revealed earlier this month that the Oscar-winning VFX company would launch a 75-person office in Vancouver with plans to expand beyond that initial headcount by year’s end.
Weta did not respond to multiple interview requests from BIV, but CEO Prem Akkaraju said in a press release “the global growth in entertainment content has allowed us the flexibility to really pursue the projects we want and to expand our business model to tap into talent in more locations around the world.”
The Vancouver studio will be Weta’s first dedicated production office outside of New Zealand, where it was founded by filmmaker Peter Jackson in the 1990s.
The VFX house might be best known for its work on the Lord of the Rings franchise, while the Vancouver team will be tasked with working on Canadian filmmaker James Cameron’s multiple sequels to his 2009 sci-fi blockbuster Avatar blockbuster.
Like DNEG, a fresh injection of capital preceded Weta’s expansion into Vancouver.
Gaming giant Unity Software Inc. (NYSE:U), better known as Unity Technologies, acquired Jackson’s company for US$1.62 billion back in November. And Unity has previously taken a liking to B.C., having acquired Port Coquitlam’s Finger Food Advanced Technology Group and its 200 workers in May 2020.
“Vancouver is an established market for VFX, animation and games talent, and we look forward to welcoming them into the Weta FX family,” Akkaraju said in his prepared statement.
But Loc Dao, executive director of the DigiBC industry association, said delivering all the needed workers to the labour market amid these expansion effort is a challenge.
“We’re constantly looking at how – and having discussions with both the province and within industry – we can keep increasing that capacity,” he said.
DigiBC estimates the creative tech sector, which includes VFX, animation and gaming, was hiring between 1,000 and 2,000 new workers per year during the pandemic.
The creative tech sector is now turning to initiatives such as new micro-credentials programs from the province aimed at filling in skills gaps for recent grads, self-taught workers or those looking to reskill after working in other industries.
“This isn’t going to solve everything, but it’s definitely a [step] in the right direction,” Dao said, adding that the industry also must rely on Canada’s progressive immigration policies and industry-led mentorship to ensure senior talent is available to guide projects.
“And it’s definitely going to help even more having some of that brand recognition because it’s way easier for [young people] to imagine what a career could be if they recognized what the work is that they could be working on.”
Meanwhile, Farley said the arrival of more big-name competitors in Vancouver isn’t necessarily a bad thing for DNEG.
“In the short term, obviously, there will be an impact on the talent pool. But I think we’ve always seen that a healthy industry comes from diversity in the employment field. It attracts projects, it attracts clients, it attracts artists ultimately as well. It’s good to have key, big competitors in the town. It brings a richness to it. It brings stability. It means that Vancouver is viable, long term.”
