M83 Studio is a South Korean visual effects house founded in 2020 by renowned South Korean film director and VFX Supervisor Jeong Seong-jin. Before M83, Jeong co-founded Dexter Studios, a mainstay in Korea's VFX industry. During his tenure with Dexter Studios, Jeong handled VFX Supervision on several renowned international and domestic productions, including 2019's Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, "Parasite". After Dexter Studios, Jeong completed a brief stint as a freelancer before assembling M83's current team of seasoned VFX specialists under his leadership. At the heart of M83's pipeline lies Autodesk software that helps this team design and make any VFX shots they're tasked with.
Whether it's Flow Production Tracking (formerly ShotGrid) implementation to manage hundreds of specialists working across multiple continents or taking advantage of Maya and MotionBuilder's character creation workflows, Autodesk helps M83 design and make any VFX shot they're tasked with. We recently spoke with Jeong to learn more about Autodesk's critical role in their production work, their role in and the state of the Korean VFX industry, and hear what the future has in store for M83.
Hello, my name is Jeong Seong-jin, founder of M83 Studio. I previously co-founded Dexter Studios, a bastion of cutting-edge domestic VFX technology in South Korea. Throughout my career, I have directed the visual effects for several renowned national and international productions, including Mr. Go, The Pirates, Along with the Gods, Parasite, and Space Sweepers. I stepped away from Dexter Studios in 2018 and worked briefly as an independent freelancer before establishing M83 in 2020.
M83 is a VFX house founded by a seasoned coalition of computer graphics experts. M83 serves as a nexus for VFX specialists, each possessing over two decades of industry experience and nuanced expertise. The studio's ethos is centered on crafting superior visual effects, taking on VFX responsibilities for movies, dramas, and online video streaming content. With a keen aesthetic sensibility and unwavering professionalism, we promptly seized VFX duties for hit productions like the drama "Vincenzo" soon after its inception, swiftly ascending the ranks of the domestic VFX industry.
M83 Studio takes its name from the M83 Galaxy, otherwise known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. Proximate to our galaxy, the M83 Galaxy is famed for its dramatic and mysterious shape. The name encapsulates our studio's commitment to consistently deliver scenes of ever more excellent drama and dynamism for our clients. I wish to uphold the spirit of M83, striving tirelessly to transform the studio into a preeminent entity within the Korean VFX sector. We've already showcased rapid progression, helming the VFX of various blockbuster films and television dramas. We aspire to solidify our industry position by embarking on comprehensive graphic projects, including battle sequences in large-scale blockbuster productions.
I helmed the VFX for the Netflix original film Space Sweepers. This film marked my venture into the Science Fiction genre. Conceived by pioneering Director Jo Sung-hee, known for his acclaimed 2012 film A Werewolf Boy, Space Sweepers paints a future filled with spaceships and robots. I felt considerable pressure when initially confronted with the project proposal, especially as several team members, including myself, lacked experience crafting space-themed environments. Nevertheless, by utilizing an arsenal of tools, such as MotionBuilder and Maya, for our 3D character animation, M83 successfully delivered everything from character modeling to rigging and animation.
Space Sweeper's VFX was created by a collaborative force of eight subcontracting firms and over 1,000 specialists. Given the magnitude of personnel, I emphasized the criticality of seamless teamwork early on. The cornerstone of rendering high-quality output in an environment like this was Flow Production Tracking. As a cloud-based utility, Flow Production Tracking is tailored to optimize the production management of diverse projects, including movies, television, and games, enabling the orchestration of systematic workflows. Leveraging Flow Production Tracking's extensive toolset, all staff members can glean insights into their individual responsibilities and team advancement and expedite feedback exchange. Moreover, producers can maintain a vigilant overview of the project's trajectory, administer schedules effectively, promptly detect potential snags, and accurately forecast the project's completion. Flow Production Tracking allowed us to manage our projects and schedules more adeptly by enabling remote operations, spanning work reviews, and feedback dissemination to final product verification.
It's not uncommon for us to face scheduling or budgeting constraints that make overseas location filming difficult. In these situations, we typically generate the required overseas scenes with computer graphics, such as our work on Vincenzo. The production of Vincenzo was impacted by COVID-19, rendering on-site filming in Italy impossible. The team leveraged Flow Production Tracking and Maya to authentically recreate Italian locales within a Seoul-based studio to overcome this.
As a VFX producer, I was astounded by the positive viewer response to the vineyard scene in Vincenzo, which sparked significant discussions online. Viewers commended the strikingly realistic portrayal of specific settings, such as the Italian vineyards and palaces. That left an indelible imprint on me. The exceptional functionalities and the conducive working environment provided by Autodesk solutions like Flow Production Tracking and Maya were instrumental in securing that favorable audience reception.
The growing demand for hyper-realistic special effects in science fiction films, dramas, and other video content has elevated the significance and indispensability of VFX technology in the Korean media landscape. From a financial standpoint, whereas previously, around 20% of a film's overall production budget was devoted to VFX, this figure has recently soared to an average of 30%, peaking at 50%. As funding earmarked for visual and special effects escalates substantially, the complexity and elegance of VFX scenes will continue to be heightened.
M83's future blueprint has a robust focus on VFX technology research. M83 plans to invest continually in technological research and development, prioritizing quality to continue producing superior results. Our strategy incorporates developing plugin technology that can augment the usability of existing solutions, such as Flow Production Tracking and Maya, rather than launching new solutions. Furthermore, M83 is broadening its operations to include new media arenas, such as the metaverse. Our unwavering conviction to prioritize work quality will remain constant as we traverse new territories. We are equipped to generate high-quality content in these novel domains by relying on solid solutions from our time-tested ally, Autodesk.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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