(written from a Production point of view)
G. Creative Productions Inc., often abbreviated to G Creative or G-Creative, is a company that produces digital visual effects (VFX), aka CGI, as well as providing additional (digital) post-production services for the motion picture industry. Operating out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, it was founded around 1998 by digital artist Gladys Tong. [1]
As far as the CGI is concerned, the company specializes in the production of animated (computer) display graphics, usually enhanced with video user interface (UI) motion design. It was for this kind of visuals that the company was contracted for Star Trek Beyond, and their work is featured throughout the entire film. In this, the company is a latter-day successor of the early pioneering companies Evans & Sutherland and Video Image, who were among the first to provide the Star Trek live-action franchise with such imagery at the dawn of CGI.
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Shortly before Beyond premiered, Tong in her function as VFX Supervisor, delved somewhat deeper into the work her company had done on the film in a July 2016 interview,
"Some of our sets in previous films have been big in that sense – up to 100 monitors in one set all requiring playback live for shooting. However when I think of the Enterprise, I think big in another sense. There were probably about 35 monitors total in the Enterprise, so not our biggest set, but the Enterprise was big for me and my team. It is so iconic and having been around for 50 years, I would say the Enterprise was very big. Our playback had to perform live for the days we were shooting without failing. On top of it all, the set was being shaken during the shoot!
"[We actually] design and animate pretty much everything. In post, we even provide temp comps where we track, roto, and comp our shots to provide the graphics in context. This is extremely useful for creative approvals and for look development it helps move the shot closer to final as it is being evaluated with all the elements together. For Trek, we designed everything pretty much that required a graphical look including all the holograms you see. Then we animated in 2D and 3D depending on the shot and provided the animation as separate layers and if required even rendered them to camera as separate passes. In Star Trek Beyond, we worked closely with the other vfx vendors so it was a wonderful collaborative work flow.
"[F]or Trek and many of our other film projects we provided live on-set playback during principal photography as well as post production graphics. In fact, we feel very privileged to be one of the few departments on the production who get to be part of the film project from the early pre-production phase all the way to post production. In fact we just delivered our graphics for Trek a few weeks ago before its final release this week.
"For Trek and most other film sets we work on, most of the displays are real screens. However, there are some backlit stills used. I would estimate that less than 3% of the displays are backlit stills. In some of the shots in Trek we were even asked in post to add animation to some of these stills.
"There are so many graphics and sets in Trek that I have to think of a specific situation... in most sets during shooting, we provide live graphics whenever possible. This is true for most films today. The narrative is continually evolving oftentimes even into post. When we are shooting a set we have to provide specific graphics even if we aren’t completely sure what that is! This is a really interesting part of my job since it requires anticipation and guess work. I often joke about having a crystal ball. The purpose of doing this is to serve the creative process which includes providing visual context that can help in the performance of the actors as well as for interactive lighting in a set. This was true in the Enterprise." [2]
General history[]
The effects the company specializes in, were from its inception in high demand by the motion picture industry, and the company has accrued an impressive resume of big budget films, several of them produced by Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot Productions and Skydance Productions – the three co-producers of the three alternate reality Star Trek films. A selection include I, Robot (2004), Fantastic Four (2005), 2012 and Watchmen (2009), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Man of Steel, Elysium and Ender’s Game (all three 2013), Godzilla (2014), Chappie (2015), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, the year Star Trek Beyond premiered), and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018).
Having almost exclusively worked on theatrical features only, the company has recently ventured out into television productions as well when it produced visuals for the 2018 Netflix series Altered Carbon.
The company's post-production services entail among others, computer playback supervision and coordination, interactive lighting and projection, interactive programming, software, and hardware solutions as well as post-production design, animation and compositing.
An US-based subsidiary was opened in January 2004, operating out of Miami, Florida, but has since been shut down, having only lasted for a decade or so. [3] [4] It is yet another example of the downfall and/or exodus of motion picture industry support companies, VFX companies in particular, the USA – Hollywood especially – is suffering from since the late 1990s. [5] [6]
Founder Tong has dispelled the misconception that she had named the company after herself, "I started the company in Canada and chose the name in a hurry. I wanted something short and simple – just a letter but wasn’t allowed to incorporate a company with just one letter of the alphabet so I had to come up with a longer name. Many people assume that the G stands for Gladys but it actually represents more than me – graphics, geek, gear, green (for green screen) to name a few. I like the ambiguity and endless possibilities. Much like what we do there are no right answers to everything but many possible answers." [7]
Star Trek Beyond staff[]
Gladys Tong has confirmed that her company employed a team of ten (roughly half of her company's then complement) on Star Trek Beyond. [8] However, only six of them, including herself, have received an official credit and include,
- note:functions as ascertained on the individual IMDb entries
- Gladys Tong – Founder, CEO, VFX Supervisor
- Paul Beaudry – Lead Motion Graphics Artist
- Cameron Drinkle – Motion Picture Video Coordinator
- Jamie McCallen – Computer and Video Playback Artist
- Ryan Uhrich – Motion Graphics Artist
- Aiden Zanini – Motion Picture Video Coordinator