The story of Frantic Films – and it is one that is still young and continues to evolve – is unique. The company built itself into a successful visual effects service provider and then branched off into proprietary software and long-form and commercial production. Today, it continues to excel in all these areas, and despite making an impact in Hollywood and abroad – opening satellite offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles and Australia – it still calls Winnipeg home.

Frantic was formed 10 years ago, when Winnipeg VFX artist Chris Bond joined forces with longtime friend and University of Manitoba commerce grad Ken Zorniak. Their idea was to offer cutting-edge VFX, animation, and computer graphics to the TV and feature film industry at higher quality and lower prices than established shops.

‘After graduation, I was working at Safeway getting some management experience, while Chris was working for a local TV production house,’ says Zorniak, Frantic’s COO and executive coproducer. (Bond is president.) ‘We looked at the Winnipeg market, and figured that there was no one doing what we had in mind, so we decided to give it a go.’

Today the duo, both 36, has taken on a staff of 113, a live-action production division headed by CEO Jamie Brown (see interview, p. 28) and a commercial wing under the eye of executive producer Jeff Peeler. And the company’s profile is as high as it gets. At the recent Academy Awards, Poseidon and Superman Returns, both of which Frantic worked on, were nominated for best visual effects.

Meanwhile, it continues to grow its production and copro credits, with a catalog as diverse as its corporate makeup, including: the lifestyle Til Debt Do U$ Part, which advises couples in messy financial situations, airing on Slice; the various Quest reality shows, including Pioneer Quest and Quest for the Sea, which have participants live in conditions and situations from the past; the darkly comic CTV MOW Zeyda and the Hitman, starring Judd Hirsch and Danny Aiello; and the feature film Lucid, a psychological drama by director Sean Garrity.  

On a totally different plane, Frantic’s homegrown software solutions have proven so sophisticated that offerings such as Deadline are sold to post houses worldwide.

Frantic’s early days were anything but ostentatious. The 250-square-foot space that was its first home was hardly Industrial Light & Magic. But that was fine with Bond and Zorniak. All they wanted was to make a living doing what they loved best – Bond producing VFX, and Zorniak managing and selling their services.

They started getting clients early on. Tight for cash, they bought equipment and software as needed, often on a job-by-job basis. Despite the fact that much of their early work was for the local Winnipeg market, Bond and Zorniak always had their eye on Hollywood.

‘When you’re from Winnipeg, people in larger Canadian cities tend to look down on you,’ Zorniak says. ‘But they couldn’t care less about this in Hollywood, in part because they are accustomed to dealing with people by phone and e-mail, rather than face-to-face.’

The first big break from the States came in 2000, when Warner Bros. was shooting the cyber-thriller Swordfish, starring John Travolta, Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman. The film’s VFX supervisor, Boyd Shermis, needed a 45-second pre-visualization of the wildly ambitious opening scene. The segment involves a massive explosion in a downtown L.A. intersection, with time standing still as the camera pans around more than 500 pieces of debris, glass fragments, flying people, police cars and buildings.

To accomplish this Herculean feat, Shermis invested his faith in Frantic. Bond’s team had to work out where multiple still cameras needed to be placed to capture the live explosion, so that a ‘bullet-time effect’ could be achieved. Eventually, the shot called for 134 35mm still cameras outside and 45 in an interior set, all timed to go off sequentially.

‘For three weeks, we mapped out everything that was related to the shoot at that intersection,’ recalls Zorniak. ‘Warner was spending millions on this shot, so they wanted to get it right.’

It was for this same reason, plus the quality of Frantic’s pre-viz work, that Bond was able to convince Shermis to let Frantic produce VFX for the film.

‘We ran the project right down to the wire, but we made it happen,’ Zorniak recalls. ‘That opening sequence has become identified with the film. Roger Ebert even called it ‘brilliant.”

Frantic’s success with Swordfish opened more Hollywood doors, and the company subsequently won jobs on such prestigious projects as X2, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Silent Hill and Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. For Superman Returns, Frantic created an eye-popping scene in which alien crystals transform into a large land mass. To achieve this, Frantic artists called on their own Flood fluid simulator and Krakatoa particle generation/rendering software, in addition to the Spore program.

‘We were very happy with Frantic’s work on the film, both in their crystal and kryptonite development, and in the sequences they finished themselves,’ said Mark Stetson, the film’s VFX supervisor, in an earlier interview with Playback.

While Frantic’s VFX division continues to thrive, to reduce its vulnerability to the ‘boom/bust’ cycle of that kind of service work, Bond and Zorniak decided to expand into live-action production in 2000.

To head up that division, they partnered with Brown, a former entertainment lawyer and CEO of prodco Credo Entertainment. Under his guidance as executive producer and CEO, the company has produced programming that has aired on CTV, History Television, Life Network/Slice and Global Television. Its shows have sold to more than 40 international territories.

To boost its presence in commercial production, Frantic recruited Peeler, an industry veteran with credits for clients such as Wal-Mart, Manitoba Hydro, Procter & Gamble, CanWest Global and the Government of Canada.

‘We’ve been incredibly busy since I came here three years ago,’ Peeler says. ‘Having access to Frantic’s incredible VFX division really helps us win contracts worldwide.’

But despite all its international success, Frantic remains true to its Manitoba roots.

‘All of us – me, Chris, Ken and Jeff – are from Winnipeg,’ says Brown. ‘It’s a great city full of talented people, great to live and play in, and yet it costs less to work here than in other North American cities. This gives us a real edge when bidding for work… And we find that people who come here to work on projects with us grow to love this city.’

A decade in, Frantic continues to draw world-class VFX gigs, such as on the forthcoming sci-fi flick Journey 3D from Walden Media and New Line Cinema. And its plans also include remaining in the ‘Peg.

‘We look forward to getting bigger and more challenging projects, but we have never forgotten where we came from,’ says Zorniak. ‘We’re also looking forward to the next 10 years and beyond.’

www.franticfilms.com