Founded in Wellington (New Zealand) in 1999, Oktobor immediately set out to establish itself as a leading design, visual effects (VFX) and interactive facility. It grew quickly, being one of the few facilities besides Weta Digital to provide visual effects for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yet it’s not all just about fancy pixel work, and the company also has a strong interactive department and offers clients full service multimedia solutions.

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So, tell us a bit about yourself?
Raised by wolves…. just joking. I was born and raised in New Zealand, my academic education completed with a just pass at high school, and then the real work began. My first role (job) was as an apprentice sign writer, and this was to be the start of my connection with creative. However I had limitations to my creative skills (ability low, ambition high) and found that I was far more productive being directly in front of clients, which told me that I should park my desires to be a creative and look at how I can sell it instead. While trying to get an account managing position in advertising, my father organized for me (he was in the liquor industry) to drive a forklift for a well respected wine store in Wellington… before I knew it I had spent 14 years in the wine industry, my last role as Marketing Manager for Penfolds Wine Australia.

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And how did you end up at Oktobor?
After finally arriving in advertising by starting my own company (ZOO Creative) and after five years of running this successful business, I took a role as GM in music television, then two years later I was lured to Oktobor to drive business, and haven’t look back since!

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What do you love about film and motion design that nothing else compares to?
We get to make really cool stuff… I mean the people who I work with are some of the most talented people in the world at what they do, and they are just good guys and gals who have a real passion for what they do. It becomes infectious to be involved in a globally recognized brand that influences so many fantastic campaigns be it digital, or TV, or these days both… at the same time.

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When pitching to a client what processes do you follow and what do you think is the key to success?
We get very involved with the client’s communication issues. We’ve never been too ‘gear obsessed’, or ‘style focused’ for that matter. It’s the result of involved research and an understanding of who we are talking to. Being in the moving image business we ultimately win the pitches by demonstrating tonally that we understand our clients’ requirements.

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When creating with a mass audience in mind – as with film/TV – what do you need to take into account that other creative fields don’t encounter?
Working predominantly in advertising, our biggest challenge actually lies in front of the message. It’s getting people engaged with a visual concept or story and getting them to look up from their magazine, and not look back down. You have to work harder at this in today’s age. The days of doing something ‘cool’ and strapping the brand message on at the end are long over. People want to be engaged on an emotional level and really feel involved in an experience.

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What is the process behind creating a photo-realistic piece for a client – what goes into the production/post production?
As this is a pretty broad question I will try to answer it by briefly explaining the pipeline we used on a previous project for Sony Bravia called ‘Dominoes’. This project called for many thousands of dominoes to tumble through various landscapes around Rajasthan India. As it was cost prohibitive to transport and manipulate thousands of these two metre tall objects it was decided to shoot a few hundred in camera and the many thousand would be made in the computer. Firstly the art department designed and built a domino… we then built our own one from the same designs in the computer. The real dominoes (200) were then shot in situ around the various locations required. At this stage we (VFX supervision) were on set to measure distances and put tracking makers around the set so we could later track the 2D footage and recreate the world in the computer. Another important aspect of the supervision process was to gather photographic references of the environment and dominoes themselves. This information would be used to texture the dominoes and build a 3D environment to capture reflections and shadows. The dominoes were then animated, rendered and handed over to our Flame department for compositing. In this process the 3D renders are compiled to seamlessly integrate with the shot footage adding additional smoke/dust/sky replacements, birds and various other elements to bring the commercial to life.

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What can we expect from Oktobor next?
We are witnessing the integration of screen convergence and Oktobor has been a driver of creative convergence, so what you will see next is more campaigns that have more initial involvement (our artists and creative teams discussing creative outcomes at that inception of the idea) and owning more aspects of the creative production process by collaborating with a wide selection of production partners (live action, Audio, Print etc.). We love to just do great ads, and add value to the brand message.

www.oktobor.com