To explore the limits of visual effects – A visit to Shenzhen LOCATOR Film and Television Culture

They are the special effect team behind the animated feature “Nezha” (hereinafter referred to as “Nezha”). Using an astonishing one billion special effects particles to create the most shocking scene in the “Nezha” movie — the ultimate battle of Chen Tangguan, they are Shenzhen LOCATOR Film and Television Culture.

The second visit to LOCATOR, found they had moved from the original 400-500 square meters to the current 800-900 square meters large studio, the company name has also changed from Locator Visual Effect to LOCATOR Film and Television Culture.

With many questions in mind, I interviewed Mr. Nie Huajun, CEO of Shenzhen LOCAOTR.

CGGE：You have been working on special effects for more than ten years. Can you tell us about your experiences?

Mr.Nie: I was originally in Beijing, where I graduated from a normal school majored in fine arts. After a year or two, I earned some money and went to Beijing Film Academy for further study. There was a cooperative animation chance. At that time, it didn’t matter if it was a movie, TV show or animation. There were 22 students in that class, and I was one of the 4 chosen to do Zhang Jizhong’s “The Condor Chivalrous Couple”. Later, we also worked with the “Song Dynasty Chief Criminal Officer”, “Kang xi Secret Visit” and “The Fall”. The shooting experience came from the 1.5 year work at Hengdian, which could be considered as “heng drift” passed. I started out as a special effect artist, and have also assisted in pulling wires physically for special effect. We claimed ourselves to be the director of visual effects, but in fact there was no such term.  And the ending title was computer special effects, On the shooting scene, we were called “computer”: “computer, you come over, we cannot make it work, go ahead, direct”. I was only 22 or 23 years old then, No one would believe that I was the director.

Then I came to the south. Puzzle Animation Studio happened to start a movie “Storm Rider”.  I thought it was a live action movie, later learned that it was an animation. At that time, I was already earning CNY 7000, but they offered CNY 3500.  I said no problem., I had a lot of savings.  In fact, there was nothing, but I liked it, wanted to do it. In less than four months, I was given a raise.  And a year later, I earned more than the past. Everyone got off work at 7 – 8 pm, I worked till 10 – 11pm.  At that time, I kept learning animations on the side from the film team. I made 30 special effects shots by myself, and then “stole” 30 shots from my colleague sitting on my left, and another 30 shots from the one on my right, so I had 90 shots. I just loved it. That’s what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, not long, Puzzle Animation Studio completed “Storm Rider” and got no more work, and had to lay off personnel. Because at that time, the domestic movie special effects were basically done abroad, such as Europe, America or South Korea. It was not until 2012, the special effects of Urshan’s “Painted Skin 2” began to be made in China. With box office of more than CNY 700 million then, Chinese special effects began to see hope.

But you see, I left out one thing. Didn’t I say that we were all laid off?  Some colleagues went to foreign special effects companies, like Industrial Light and Magic in Singapore. I could not, I got married in Shenzhen, so I started my own business in Shenzhen. At that time, there was an original animation: “Baozi vs Sushi”.  I took it over, started a company called Huashijie. This was my history of blood and tears. I started my business in October of 2009 and closed it in March of 2011. I remembered it extremely well.  Everyday was the same throughout those two whole years.  Worked from 9am to 12pm. I lived in Meilin and went back and forth to and from Baoan every day, 25 kilometers each way. But I got power and had also achieved a couple good jobs, I even represented China to participate in the Berlin’Film Show. In addition to the original baozi, sushi and fly dog characters, we also set up special team to create many new characters, such as Youtiao, Shaoba, Noodles and Dumplings. It was after I led the team, top-level designs and new roles were created.  But the IP were registered by others. I didn’t have the knowledge, I didn’t have the experience, then I got depressed.  I slept for four months, and almost committed suicide. I owed my employees a month’s salary, I asked them to take away the computers and they didn’t, that was really touching. Six cores personnel said, “it doesn’t matter with no pay, we can wait for three months, and if we can’t make it in three months, we will wait another three months.” That’s what the core personnel said, what about the rest? I told them to leave early to look for jobs, but they didn’t leave and they didn’t look for jobs. Finally I could not bear the pressure and very afraid of having to go to jail.  Was my life over? Have I lost face in the industry? I just felt like there’s a wall in front and I didn’t want to see anyone. In retrospect, I tried to think: why did I fail? In a year and seven months, we made 6-7 short films, one was “Kung Fu Dining”, one was “The Year of the Tiger”… still reputable in the industry, but the works were not cashed out, no business model, no income, the difficulty was: how do you sell the video? Looking back now, Huashijie was in fact a pure production house. So far, this was my biggest lesson and gain. That period was really difficult, The Labor Bureau called, my hands shaked when I answered the phone: am I over, will I be shot dead? !

How did I come back? It was only after four months of sleep in 2011 that I slowly recovered. After coming back to conscious, I got to survive, but I couldn’t do anything back home.  So I still set up a company called Vision Times in Shenzhen, to do TCV ads, to do promotional video. At that time there was help.  Shenzhen television station gave me some resources, we began to do a jewelry advertising project, that was an opportunity. Four companies bid, and budget was not large.  We were not able to get location for shooting. But with my connection from working at Hengdian. I called my buddy manager. The shooting took 1 day.  Hengdian’s schedule was tight.  I just got it done.  Then the whole jewelry circle knew: advertisement shooting did not have to be Shanghai’s big advertising companies! So I saved myself. But I was ashamed to tell my classmates in Beijing that I was making advertisements and publicity, I felt ashamed. I thought I had to go back to my original goal.  Because I aimed to work in movies and TV series, I left the agency to its core staff and set up the current Locator Culture (formerly Locator Visual Effects).

In fact, people who have worked for more than a decade know what the industry is like. There were 22 people in our animation class, and only 3-4 people are still holding on. The return on investment in this industry is still relatively low, the work intensity is quite large. You see, I’m not making a lot of money with this company, but at least it’s sustainable.

Why am I holding on so long? This is also due to my passion for technology. You can see the extent of my feelings, my son is called Nie Feng (one of the character of ” Storm Rider”).  No one at home agreed to this name, so my son’s name was not registered for a couple of years.  He did not have a name at kindergarten.  At primary, no way to get around, and his name was decided finally.

Oh, off track! So I said, after all these years, I’ve come to the conclusion that mindset matters. If you want to start a company, you can’t expect to start a company and be 100% successful. But after that one failure, I got used to it and adjusted to it. What the hell with failure? Because I like it. I can always come back. So mentality is very important.

CGGE：Why did you choose to start a business in Shenzhen? By the way, LOCATOR is a very special name. Is there anything special about it?

Mr.Nie：We just went through the initial Shenzhen entrepreneurial experience, including the later advertising company.  Now let us talk about the current company – Locator Film and Television Culture.

Now, Locator Film and Television Culture invests, produces, markets, distributes. I think marketing and distribution are not feasible in Shenzhen, but investment and production are, especially investment. Because Shenzhen has private capital.  A few days ago, a film producer who travelled between Shenzhen and Beijing and lived in Shenzhen came to me.  Plenty of fund come from Shenzhen.  He founded funding for one big movie last year with box office at CNY 3 billion+.  He made big money.  He came to see me the other day and was interested in our company. I analyzed the whole industry with him, where the drawbacks were, and what had we done in the south? Probably because I have experienced more than others, not just in technology like I used to be. It’s hard to be an enterprise. You can do technology and set up a studio. No problem to make your own living. But you need a vision to run a business. Because we have a solid foundation of production and special effects,,in addition, I am no stranger to shooting and post-production, so I will dig deep into the whole production process to see what we can do in Shenzhen and what we can achieve. On thinking hard, it is still special effects. This is also my feelings since I came to Shenzhen in 2007 to do “Storm Rider”. Our current business is based on graphics to provide content creation services for the industry.  Because, whether it is live-action movies or big online movies, including high-end advertising, digital content, and animation, they all need special effects. In addition to special effects, we now have lighting, rendering, hair and fabric solutions, and even Concept.  So it’s really just full integration: providing services based on graphics. We are familiar with the whole process, this is also our development direction.

Where Locator got its name: in 3D effects, doesn’t a lot of software have a locator in it? Our company name is transliterated from locator.

Our brand will be upgraded step by step, and the current positioning is the creation of video and film effects, because we have already passed the production stage. Locator is actually a very new company, which was founded in October 2017. It is headquartered in Shenzhen, and has a branch office in Beijing. In addition, we also have a team in Kuala Lumpur, which has more than 30 Chinese. In 2018, we took on a lot of work. Just because we had labor in our branches, we dared to do it, and we did it very quickly. At that time, the whole positioning was still far away. Last year, we even thought about setting up a branch office in Vancouver island. We were thinking about how to get jobs from abroad, so the profit might be higher. So we have people from Singapore, Hollywood, Beijing. We have been working for more than 10 years, so we can say that we are the first batch of visual effects creations in China.

Unlike others, we have our own R&D department. I think: painfully working on special effects, on production, is there a future? If no future, we have to make a difference, We are in Shenzhen.  Isn’t Shenzhen a high-tech city? So a research and development team, and then maybe c++ language, and then graphics, only with these in place, we dare to do the special effects of “Nezha”.

Whole year last year, we completed “production, study and research”. There is still a studio and equipment on the 1st floor next to our company. We did’t have the money to buy them, but we can integrate them. For example, for schools, don’t they want students to have practical experience in projects? We produced “Fuyao” together last year. This not only enables students to get real project experience, but also solves the talent problem of our enterprise, killing two birds with one stone. And then, in the technology sector, we have no problem because we are in Shenzhen. We begin to prepare for the establishment of a research institute.

And then you see our brand is starting to upgrade, it used to be Locator Visual, and now it’s Locator Film and Culture, because now we’re developing content. We have already taken the IP adaptation film, and some of my classmates have been doing the distribution all the year round. Meanwhile, we are also doing a low cost two-dimensional project in Changsha, it is just an IP. There is also a film collaboration with a first class director.  A light comedy and soft science fiction film based on a Russian story, which is very fun and very funny. There are others, I’m not going to go through all.

CGGE：It is said that Locator also participated in the most difficult special effects scenes in “Nezha”?

Mr.Nie：“Nezha” was like this. It was around October 2018. In fact, my special effects team had no spare time at that time, but I saw a 5-minute demo, Taiyi playing with the firegun, which was very funny. I thought the style was very interesting, the project could be taken, then I said yes. But when I brought it back later, I found it was all tears, because the requirements of the project were very high. The effect was directly comparable with the special effects of Hollywood, and the budget was relatively low. How could we do it? I was afraid to sign it at that time, but we still wanted to participate in such a good film, how to solve it? I just thought of one thing, gave it a test first. Actually they didn’t need us to do the test, our strength was here. But at that time I dared not get the job, so I said: let’s do this, I do the test first, test passes, we will talk. I didn’t talk about the price, I didn’t talk about the contract, we did the test first. It took me about 10 days to pass the test before I had the confidence to sign the contract. There were more than 1,000 special effects shots in “Nezha”. Because we were short of labor, we accepted the harder(difficult) 100 shots, such as the battle of Chentangguan and Tianjie, which were all the critical scenes.  And then the production kept on being delayed.  Production period was supposed to be 3 months, it ended up delaying to 4,5,6 months.  Due to high standard demanded, revision kept on.   Film producer, Wen, came to pacify, saying we could look forward to making it up with the director afterwards (laugh). It was alright afterwards.  Chentongguan was definitely a difficult one.  Our calculation power was not enough. In addition to the water effect, there’s the lightning effect, and there’s the face shattering effect. However, the employees were actually working excitedly. What impressed me most was that the more demand, the more excited the employees became.  The revision direction was clear and the work got better and better. Employees were willing to work overtime voluntarily, with the most at two months’time off. The biggest difficulty was the large-volume particle algorithm. Generally, project only requires million of particles. But we did “Nezha” at level of 1 billion, still didn’t work. We then looked at breaking the whole thing down into 10 pieces, tens of pieces, even hundreds of pieces, working it individually, and then putting them back together. So it was a good thing to have a research and development department, with problem finally solved by technical means.

Another point of “Nezha”worth sharing was collaboration, the collaboration of dozens of companies. This was not simple, and there was no collaboration tool, it was completely human dependent! Look at how feedback of this project was transmitted. The director of Jiaozi got the shots we submitted and began to shoot a video on the shots: this place needed to change like this, and that needed to change like this. This way of communicating is traditional, but intuitive. In addition, “Nezha” script structure was also particularly good.

CGGE：Your company is not big yet, but it is surprising that you have your own R&D department. Please tell us more.

Mr.Nie：At present, we are just starting this research and development department. We still stay at the same level as the technology leader to develop some tools to solve some drawback of the current special effect technology. Our goal is to go even higher, for example, to set up a graphics institute and then apply it to our special effect. Let’s say, we do a tornado, like the special effect did for “Nezha.  We might have taken 20 days to do a shot, but if we could have done more calculations, Simply saying, as for special effects, it is simply developing algorithms for graphics that stimulated the computing power of the hardware.

Source: CGGE