Westworld rising from VFX glory with Netflix to independent content

Visual effects studio Westworld is eying a place in the wider content production universe, says CEO Daniel Son.

Westworld CEO Daniel Son poses for a photo after an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the company's headquarters in Goyang, Gyeonggi, on Friday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

━ Game Changer

As K-content rises through the ranks on global streaming platforms, there have been some iconic scenes that have left memorable impressions in viewers' minds: the infamous church scene from the hit Netflix series "The Glory" (2022-23) when Lee Sa-ra experiences hallucinations to see the snake from the Garden of Eden mural slither toward her, the fantasy-like whale scenes from the TV series "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" (2022) that appear whenever Woo Young-woo has an epiphany, or the sinister malevolent entities that gave people the shivers in the film "Exhuma," which recently achieved the rare feat of surpassing 10 million admissions.

The visual effects (VFX) of such iconic scenes were born out of the minds of the VFX studio Westworld.

Westworld has grown rapidly from a company that started out with three employees led by CEO Daniel Son in 2018 to more than 200 employees. It has formed a five-year partnership deal with Netflix for research & development (R&D) on visual production for the platform's shows. The studio also established its first subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh in November 2023 to drive its expansion into the global VFX market.

A scene from the ENA drama series "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" visualized by Westworld (2022) [ENA]

In 2022, the company raised 20 billion won ($14.5 million) in Series A funding from the venture capital firm IMM Investment.

Son credits the company’s swift advancement to, of course, the global popularity of K-content, but claims that there’s “endless possibility” for growth in the domestic VFX industry because quality expectations from global viewers have risen in parallel with its fame.

“Visual effects are about more than just creating fabulous creatures and monsters that seemed to have walked out of one’s imagination,” Son said. “We are content creators who strategize how this content can be received more closely in line with our intended direction or be better appreciated by viewers.”

From altering the actor’s physical figures to changing weather conditions or seasons to follow the narrative’s timeline, Son says visual effects are all about getting the audience to become fully immersed in the story.

“In other words, visual effects are about maintaining the tone and manner of the content,” he said. “This became much more important after streaming platforms became the mainstream content market because people are not confined to a movie theater but can watch from any place at any time they want. And their eyes are much more accurate than one would expect, so if they feel even the slightest change, they start to concentrate on that instead of focusing on the story.”

The Korea JoongAng Daily sat down with Son at the studio’s headquarters in Goyang, Gyeonggi, to discuss the bright future he envisions for Korean content and his future plans for Westworld.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Westworld CEO Daniel Son speaks during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the company's headquarters in Goyang, Gyeonggi, on Friday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Q. Can you tell us more about the Ho Chi Minh subsidiary? I believe Westworld is the first Korean production company to have established an overseas subsidiary. A. I first had the chance to visit Ho Chi Minh with the Korean Film Council in 2016 to discover new markets, new opportunities there. The VFX studios in Vietnam were similar to the old days of Korean firms back in the late 1990s when there were only three to four employees per company. People there were enthusiastic and wanted to work, but didn’t have much to do because there wasn't a lot of in-house content to begin with.

Things really started to be set in motion when Netflix entered the domestic market in 2019 and heaps of work started to come in. There was just so much to do and that’s when we thought, why not outsource the work overseas, like to the workforce in Ho Chi Minh that we’ve formed a good relationship with over the past five to six years? The venture opened its doors last year and there are currently 15 Vietnamese employees.

The Vietnamese market is also growing at a rapid pace, you can say that they’re just like the Korean film market in the 90s, so we see a lot of potential there.

The Ho Chi Minh branch is only a fraction of the bigger goal Westworld is envisioning — we strive to become an all-rounder entertainment company that creates our own story narratives, and films and edits our content. And the Ho Chi Minh venture can utilize our original intellectual property (IP) for a remake and develop their own original narratives there, to be fully functional as an independent content company akin to Westworld here.

Employees from Westworld work on the visualizations of creatures in season 1 of the Netflix series "Sweet Home" (2020). [WESTWORLD]

A scene from the Netflix series "Sweet Home" (2020) visualized by Westworld [NETFLIX]

How has the Korean content landscape changed before and after Netflix came into the picture? For Westworld, Netflix became a great gateway to form connections with foreign companies and get a peek into how they operate.

Netflix is a content company, not a virtual production company, so they wanted to do R&D to develop technology and asked Westworld to become a partner. To create the technology, we need all the high-tech gadgets like LED panels and trackers that are manufactured by global companies. Even if we wanted to, it would take far too long a time for Westworld to contact each individual manufacturer and acquire the equipment at an affordable price, but Netflix could shortcut that process. And when we faced a problem, Netflix would immediately call up experts on Zoom and ask them for their advice.

A scene from the TV drama series "Queen of Tears" visualized by Westworld [PARK SANG-MOON]

What was shocking for us was that there was this technological problem we encountered during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Netflix immediately gathered people from the United States, Singapore and other Korean companies online and they began a discussion. This was surprising because there were no economic gains or any other benefit for these people, they were simply here to purely talk about how they could resolve this issue and help advance content quality.

As a whole, Netflix changed Korea’s prior rule of thumb about the preproduction process. Before, we were always in a race against time so it was mostly one-way communication where our clients would tell us what they wanted. Netflix, on the other hand, gave us about eight months for the preproduction process of their large-scale projects.

Eight months is conventionally the time frame for an entire TV drama series to finish filming and editing and already start airing on broadcasters. This had never been done here before, so at first, we were at a loss with all this time we had in our hands. At the end of the day, however, it turned out that we still needed more time. (Laughs) I realized that time was needed to boost the quality of our content, giving us the enough time to discuss the work together with the staff. We could now make simulations of what would happen on the set, come up with alternatives if something didn't work out, and even offer solutions to make content look better.

In other words, we became involved in the storytelling process. For instance, in the Netflix drama series “Black Knight" (2023), we would offer visualizations depicting the aftermath of a meteor impact on Seoul that transformed the city into a desert. But since it wasn’t a nuclear war, we can imagine that many of the building structures would still be preserved even if they’re crumbling, and this setting would be the place where the protagonists would fight and hide. We offered what kind of landscape we could create that could be utilized as an element in action scenes — we’re now developing the story together with our clients.

What is the most memorable challenge in visual effects that Westworld took on and was able to resolve? I believe it is the project that we’re working on right now — it’s a film called “Hope-Part 1” with director Na Jong-jin at the helm. It’s a massive 50 billion won project featuring a star-studded cast of Korean and Hollywood talent, such as Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Taylor Russell, Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Hoyeon Jung. It’s a sci-fi film that is going to be the first-ever Korean movie to be released simultaneously in theaters worldwide, not through streaming platforms. If this succeeds, it will set a precedent for Korean films to no longer be dependent on global streaming giants for content distribution.

Anyway, our challenge here is that there are these mysterious creatures who now need to really become actors in this film. Before, let’s say when we worked on Season 1 of “Sweet Home,” the creatures weren’t actors in that series. Their presence, of course, was as important as any other actor but it was mostly about their physiques and how vividly realistic they looked on the screen.

The challenge of “Hope" lies in enabling these creatures to truly make an impression on the audience through their performances. We have to use techniques such as performance capture to scan the facial expressions and acting of real-life people, and apply them to the creatures we’ve created. Hollywood films like the “Avatar” series, large-scale productions with budgets reaching into the billions of dollars, have utilized this technology, and now we’ve finally reached the point where they’re being utilized in Korea as well. Do you believe that Korea is still lagging behind Hollywood in terms of VFX technology? No, I think that we’ve pretty much caught up in terms of technology, but I think what we need experience in is how to manage large-scale projects. In “Avatar,” for instance, a few thousand people worked on that film. There has never been a project in Korea as big as that. If we had to complete such a project in a designated period of time, we wouldn’t know how to get several thousand people to collaborate or how to divide the work.

Technology exists everywhere, but to know the appropriate timing to utilize such skills is what I believe is important. And I think “Hope” could set the precedent in honing our management skills so that we can do bigger projects based on our experience there.

Westworld raised Series A funding of 20 billion won from IMM Investment. How did you utilize this investment and what are your ultimate goals for Westworld? My ultimate goal for Westworld to become a tech entertainment company. Our main skill may be in VFX, but eventually, we want to be able to participate in every step of content production without having to rely on others.

We used a good chunk of the money from IMM Investment to prepare for that. We’ve acquired five office floors of this building to eventually accommodate 500 employees. I wanted us to be flexible and give employees more space and resources whenever they need in the future. Part of it was used to attract writers and acquire IP for our production company Westworld Story.

We’re also planning for an initial public offering (IPO) by 2026. Around the end of last year, we finalized the IPO managers.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]