"Waterfront Studios serves the full spectrum of post production - from the day you wrap the shoot until you send the finished commercial or put the movie up on a cinema screen. We're the biggest and the best one-stop post house in South Africa. No-one else has a creative team as large or varied as ours or our technological infrastructure."

Laurence Mitchell, Waterfront Studios Group

WHERE WERE YOU TEN YEARS AGO? In 2 000, Laurence Mitchell was head of the SABC in the Western Cape, while Gary Edwardes was running a business in Tzaneen and only dreamt about the film industry. Sasani Studios and The Refinery were based here. Condor Cape was only started in 2003 and Waterfront Studios, Condor's partnership with The Refinery, began in 2006.
HOW HAVE THINGS CHANGED IN THE LAST DECADE? There was a big swing from film to digital. Three years ago we did 8 1/2 million foot; we do six million now. But seven years ago, if we did five feature films that was a lot, whereas now we do 18 to 23.
BIGGEST LEARNING CURVE? The move from film to digital. When HD was launched about 20 years ago, everyone said there would soon br no more PAL or NTSC, just HD, one standardised format worldwide. We did a rough calculation the other day and with the different manufacturers, the different frame rates, and the different CODECs, we came up with 600 variants. Every day, the workflow changes.
BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT? Bone Dailies took away the need to sync and log in telecine and allowed us to create a whole raft of deliverables.
HIGHLIGHT? Scorpion King 2: Rise of the Akkadian kickstarting us into long form VFX, which has continued with Hansie, Lost City Raiders, Bitch Slap, Lost Boys 3 and Dark Tide. Working on Allan Gray Legend for Keith Rose, which won The Loeries's Grand Prix and a Silver at Cannes Lions. Acquiring Clockwork Zoo as a world-class 2D animation studio. Moving into online with Ngage and Imagine. Creating live-enables broadcast studios and helping Okuhle make HecticNine9 the biggest youth show in South Africa.
TEN YEAR GOAL? To be a people-centered facility, which revolves around the talent and the work, not just the technology. Our work needs to speak for itself.