We are back! (Again)

Hello, we are back and out of website hibernation! Did you miss us?

To fill you in on what we’ve been up to, we want to talk about one of the many Engine House traditions. And we’re not talking about Mario Kart OR the Two Burrito Challenge. 

In January, we make predictions about the year ahead and the state of affairs at the end of December. On the day of our Christmas do; after the present swapping, but before the first round of tequilas, we receive a pre-ordained email full of predictions from the twelve month junior versions of ourselves. 

Let’s rewind the clock all the way back to Jan 2020. The world was very different, as were things at Engine House. Things were lined up for us to begin production on a huge Chinese co-production feature and we had plans to scale up massively. Jason had flown out to China at the end of 2019 and all the pieces of the puzzle were coming together.

In February, as we watched the news, this far-away thing suddenly felt a lot closer, and in early March, we made the decision to not attend Berlinale. 

As the weeks went on more and more things were cancelled, projects were delayed and our co-production was looking less and less likely. We furloughed and waited for a while. (It wasn’t total doom and gloom though, Mike had an inflatable pool in a polytunnel in his garden and the weather was glorious!)

Then in summer things suddenly went mad! Execs, who had clearly never been so quiet, had time to read scripts and look through pitch decks. Exciting emails were arriving in our inboxes and we felt like we were making huge strides with our own projects. 

Then we had the news we had won an Epic Megagrant - a fund aimed at those using Unreal Engine on exciting projects. This was incredible for us (they actually gave us more money than we had asked for!) and gave us the confidence and resources to push forward a lot of our projects. 

As the world inched back to something like normal, the emails slowed down again a little, but we were busy enough on an animation test for one of our features. By the time Autumn rolled around, the service work had come back with a bang and we were fully booked until the Christmas party (and after, in fact). 

Reading those emails back wasn’t the horror we had worried it might be back in the spring. It had given us time to reflect on where we were a year ago. Had we really been ready to become a much bigger studio, chugging away on a production we hadn’t developed? Was that even what we wanted to do? Having had the time and space (and support from Epic) we now have a clearer focus on what we do want to do.

We absolutely had a spanner thrown in the works by the you know what, but it ended up giving us the drive to take more risks and seek out the right opportunities in the second half of the year. 

We ended 2020 with a character test for our feature film that we were all really proud of and a handful of new connections to begin conversations with. So in Jan 2021, we each penned our letters filled with hope and optimism. Optimism with a pinch of salt. 

As a team, we try to take a realistic stance on everything and we have learnt over the last few years that these things take sooooo muchhhh timeeeee. 

At a brilliant webinar from the cool cats at powerhouse studio Cartoon Saloon, they said it takes about seven years to get a film made and they weren’t kidding. Project interest comes and goes, viable options fade away and resurface only to fade away again, and we came to realise there is no silver bullet. It takes hard work, commitment and luck. 

Since then, we’ve been keeping in touch with the Unreal team who have been incredibly helpful and supportive. Through them, we have made some wonderful connections and are welcoming new and exciting opportunities. If only we could shout about it all, but it seems the film industry likes things shrouded in mystery. 

But we appreciate this isn’t of much interest to you when the whole thing must be kept hush hush and super secret. We’ve also been flat out working on a number of service projects also in Unreal and also totally for our eyes only.

This is one of the many reasons we have a new project on our slate right now. One we can talk about, take you behind the scenes on, share insights alongside the whole production process. So keep your eyes peeled, as our internet hiatus is over and we’ll soon have lots to share with you. 

Until then, it’s Yoshi in the shoe car, praying for Moo Moo Meadows.