Reno Studios Talks VP, AI & Putting Taiwan On The Global VFX Map – Deadline

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a function the place we’ll shine a highlight on key executives and corporations outdoors of the U.S. shaking up the offshore market. This week, we’re speaking to Reno Studios, a digital studio launched in Taipei in 2017, initially dealing with VFX for Taiwanese movies, and now additionally bringing work from worldwide purchasers together with Netflix, EuropaCorp, Saudi-owned MBC Group and India’s Zee to Taiwan. Deadline sat down with co-founders Peter Huang and Tomi Kuo, and Executive Producer/Senior VFX Supervisor Christopher Chen, to speak about how the corporate has grown, their future plans, and why Taiwan is a perfect vacation spot for VFX and Virtual Production. 

Despite being identified internationally for its semiconductor and laptop {hardware} industries, Taiwan just isn’t the primary vacation spot that springs to thoughts within the Asia Pacific on the subject of VFX and digital manufacturing. Australia and New Zealand have historically been the VFX powerhouses of the area, whereas South Korea has additionally been making its mark. But that appears set to alter resulting from a mix of native expertise and entrepreneurial spirit, as evidenced by native VFX homes akin to Reno Studios; a pleasant enterprise atmosphere with authorities help; and a world-beating tech business that’s primed to take the subsequent step into storytelling.

Founded by Peter Huang and Tomi Kuo in 2017, Reno Studios began out by engaged on the VFX of native motion pictures and sequence, throughout a interval when the worldwide streamers have been focusing most of their Chinese-language manufacturing in Taiwan. Huang has a background in digital interactive media and enterprise administration, whereas Kuo beforehand labored within the post-production crew of Taiwan’s oldest studio, Central Motion Picture Corp (CMPC). 

Within just a few years of launching, the studio began selecting up awards for its work on Taiwanese content material – together with Best VFX on the Golden Horse Awards for supernatural horror Detention in 2019 and romcom My Missing Valentine in 2020. It additionally opened a brand new facility within the southern metropolis of Tainan. 

Christopher Chen joined Reno three years in the past when he returned to Taiwan from mainland China. Born in Taiwan, Chen grew up in Brazil and Canada and has labored within the movie and TV industries in each Canada and China, together with stints as General Manager of the China branches of Pixomondo and Gener8 (later rebranded as DNeg Stereo), engaged on productions together with The Last Airbender and Iron Man 2.

Although Chen returned to Taiwan for household causes, he quickly realized some great benefits of engaged on the island and the way the native VFX business, which was already producing high-quality work, could possibly be internationalized. “Taiwan boasts an abundance of talented creative artists, many of whom were trained abroad,” Chen says. “If you check the credits of major Hollywood blockbusters, you’ll see that many top VFX houses, including Weta, ILM, Digital Domain, DNeg and Scanline, have Taiwanese technical directors, animators and programmers working for them after graduating abroad.” 

In 2022, Reno turned the primary Taiwanese studio to put in a Virtual Production (VP) stage, housed on the legendary CMPC studios in north Taipei, which was lately busy with EuropaCorp’s The Weekend Escape, produced by Luc Besson and starring Luke Evans and Gwei Lun-mei. 

Huang, who studied in Canada and Australia earlier than returning to Taipei, observes that Taiwan can be an apparent vacation spot for Virtual Production: “Taiwan has a great tradition and reputation in building world-class hardware tech gear and small pixel pitch LED panels, enabling high-quality presentation of creative content,” he says. “It’s not such a huge leap from building semiconductors to creating LED sound stages.”

Other tasks which have used Reno’s LED stage over the previous 12 months embrace native award-winning native drama Old Fox, which wanted to shoot characters speaking in a automotive shifting by the streets of Eighties Taipei, and the intro video of the sixtieth Golden Horse Awards, which dropped real-life stars akin to Chang Chen and Tony Leung Chiu-wai into the long-lasting motion pictures they’d beforehand appeared in. For Old Fox, Chen explains that utilizing VP know-how was way more efficient and sensible than taking pictures towards a inexperienced display screen or shutting down Taipei streets and dressing them.

Away from the VP stage, CGI tasks lately dealt with by the studio embrace segments of MBC’s $75m historic drama sequence Muawiyah; upcoming indie motion thriller Fight Or Flight, starring Josh Hartnett; Zee premium miniseries Barzakh (Limboland); in addition to the physique transformations in Malaysian filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu’s Tiger Stripes, which gained the Critics Week award at Cannes final 12 months. 

The studio can be working with world streamers together with Netflix on upcoming supernatural thriller sequence The Oracle Rises; Paramount + on streaming film Love In Taipei; and HBO Max on comedy sequence The Other Two. 

For the larger tasks, Reno is collaborating with VFX groups from all over the world – Muawiyah entails expertise from Europe, Asia and the Middle East – which is the standard course of for big-budget productions and attainable for Reno as a result of the corporate has English-speaking senior expertise on the crew. 

The studio can be incorporating AI, VR, AR and XR instruments into its work – once more all areas that Taiwan with its superior chips and processors excels in. However, Huang factors out that the studio is deploying AI to enhance processes and never in a creepy approach to substitute people. 

“We’ve already been using AI in many sections of our workflow, such as doing preliminary concept designs and motion storyboards during pre-production; facial replacements for de-ageing actors or resurrecting old classic Asian stars during post-production; providing constant checking for more effective pipeline integration; and of course, the essential language learning to ensure nothing is lost in translation for intricate communication with foreign clients,” Huang explains.  

He provides that he understands the considerations the business has relating to AI, which performed a job within the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, however describes the know-how as a lifesaver throughout important moments in manufacturing supply deadlines: “In spite of everything, it’s still our artists and supervisors who are making the final calls for the shots to be delivered to the client, while the AI is just there to assist us.”

Huang, Kuo and Chen are additionally beneficiant sufficient to level out that they’re not the one VFX store in Taiwan – it’s a rising sector, and whereas most are engaged on Taiwanese tasks, some even have expertise with worldwide exhibits, Japanese anime and big-budget motion pictures from mainland China. Taiwan’s CGCG has been a pressure in CG animation because the late Eighties, whereas Moonshine Studio and TWR Entertainment are additionally extremely revered.

“We enjoy healthy competition with other companies with regards to local Taiwanese projects, while we often end up collaborating to share the workload on international projects, as they’re usually considerably larger than Taiwanese arthouse fare or streaming drama series,” Chen says. “We’re a small island and don’t have a huge population so it makes more sense to help each other as a unified community whenever we’re dealing with the big beasts.”

Reno’s buyers embrace high-tech corporations akin to AUO, one of many world’s main LED producers, highlighting the rising urge for food of Taiwan’s world-beating know-how sector to change into extra concerned within the content material business. This is one thing that Taiwan’s authorities can be actively encouraging by forging public-private collaborations between the 2 industries and providing tax deductions to corporations from all sectors that determine to put money into Taiwanese content material. 

Among the public-private collaborations, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) has lately signed agreements with main reminiscence storage firm ADATA (which lately invested US$18M in Digital Domain), laptop producer Asus and Korean VFX home Dexter Studios, which has credit together with Parasite and Along With The Gods.

In addition, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture offers money rebates of US$1M (TWD30M) for worldwide tasks that conduct put up and VFX work in Taiwan. Meanwhile, TAICCA’s Taiwan International Co-production Program (TICP), which has been concerned in bringing tasks akin to Tiger Stripes and The Settlers to Taiwan for post-production work, is presently being revamped with particulars to be introduced at a later date. 

With a rising pipeline of labor, backed by favorable enterprise situations, Reno is now planning growth on three fronts – ramping up its animation capabilities in Taipei and Tainan to understand absolutely CG animated exhibits; hiring full-time employees to work on undertaking growth and worldwide co-productions; and opening an workplace in Montreal in late 2024. 

On the manufacturing entrance, Reno has already co-invested in Wong Ching Po’s award-winning The Pig, The Snake And The Pigeon, produced by Taiwan’s Lee Lieh, and plans to put money into a Taiwanese supernatural thriller, a CG animated function co-production with Malaysia, and a Japan-Taiwan co-production in 2025. 

The Montreal department can be largely devoted to servicing Hollywood purchasers, in addition to growing AI instruments, as Montreal is the main centre for AI analysis and growth in Canada. “However, since the traditional Hollywood system went through two two back-to-back labour strikes, and big-budget movies are having mixed fortunes at the global box office, we think the best opportunities probably lie in the indie world,” says Chen. 

“That’s where we’re more likely to find unusual, brilliant projects, along the lines of Everything, Everywhere All At Once and Poor Things, where we can collaborate and bring them into fruition, which would be a more interesting path for us business wise.”

When requested if the studio will discover it tough to ramp up in Taiwan, the place the inhabitants is comparatively small (23.59 million) and the movie biz frowned on by many households, Chen smiles and says the VFX finish of the business, with its ties to the respectable worlds of know-how and science, normally will get a free move from mother and father. Reno can be bringing younger abilities from Southeast Asia to work in Taiwan and should open a facility in that area in just a few years time. 

“Taiwanese family tradition has always given some kind of mandate for their children to excel in maths, physics and tech-related subjects,” he says. “Previous generations may have regarded the movie industry as being a bit sketchy or even sleazy, but the mindset of parents these days seems to be that the more high-tech side of the industry brings respectability to the family.”