Cinesite’s CEO Antony Hunt spoke to Screen for a piece investigating how the VFX industry is adapting to the COVID-19 situation.

With productions shut down, releases postponed, and festivals cancelled or delayed, the coronavirus pandemic has caused chaos for multiple sectors of the film and TV industries.

Visual effects, however, is less dependent on physical interaction, and several leading UK-based companies say their teams have risen to the challenge of this unprecedented situation.

That started with the transfer from offices and edit suites to remote working. “We pretty much shut down very quickly when we saw what was happening in Italy and Spain,” says Antony Hunt, CEO at VFX stalwarts the Cinesite Group, which includes Cinesite in the UK and Canada as well as Vancouver-based Image Engine and German company Trixter.

Prior to the virus spread, the company had no remote working “because of the security audits we all have to adhere to with the major studios and streamers”, says Hunt.

However, government-mandated shutdowns across the globe meant the group had to move over one thousand employees to operating from home.

“Once we’d got permissions from them that we were able to operate creatively on all their content, that made things easier. In fact, I think we were probably up and running faster than some of them were!”

Read the full article at Screen Daily