Rising Sun Pictures plans content foray after bringing in new investor, owner Simon Hackett Rising Sun Pictures managing director Wayne Lewis and his team worked for 15 months on the climax of recently-released Gravity. GLOBALLY acclaimed Adelaide film visual effects company Rising Sun Pictures will extend its Hollywood experience into the digital world by creating its own content. The move towards building its intellectual property online has been fast-tracked thanks to a significant investment by Adelaide businessman Simon Hackett, who is now a co-owner of the business. The idea is to help Hollywood studios struggling with the changing cinema model and technology-driven audience consumption by offering them new models of content, Rising Sun's managing director Wayne Lewis says. Smaller projects, more agile content development could help them shortcut the process of staying relevant. It's a bottom-up approach. The traditional roll out focuses on a film and then products from that. It's a massive bet. Rising Sun Pictures is looking at very flexible, low-end content models that can be created and tested in a cost-effective way using online audiences. Online graphic novels are an example of a fairly low-cost way to prototype a project. Lots of people are doing it. It's not our specific idea, but it will be one of the bits of content we will create. New media will help push graphic novels further so it's not just static images and there are ways to test, build and engage with audiences. They could effectively be storyboards for a film, which would be the last product to happen. That will be the direction. Mr Lewis says Rising Sun Pictures has been focused on the visual effects business for a long time and secured a reputation. In the foreseeable future, we are never going to have the ability to create something purely new development. This foray is about allowing people to do the jobs they do and then experiment and develop that into a value-added product. With a number of successful blockbuster projects under its belt - including the just-released Gravity, X-Men Origins - Wolverine, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Prometheus, the business is now sustainable with a baseline turnover of $15 million, so there is room to explore future pathways in a changing landscape. There are new projects in the pipeline, including its first Indian film I, Frankenstein and The Seventh Son. The idea is now to in parallel build our own IP in content and tools. Rising Sun Pictures has already spun off its successful real-time video synchronisation software, cineSync, into a separate entity called Cospective. cineSync has helped Rising Sun base itself in Adelaide and take on global collaboration projects. Cospective now leases cineSync to Hollywood studios and is also developing Frankie, a web version for people outside of the feature film world. Frankie deals with "shortform" productions like advertisements, commercial videos, etc, and allows up to ten people to review, edit and provide feedback on a video in real time using the internet. It's leveraging skills, efficiencies and technology to create amazing content. Rising Sun Pictures has so much on the go, project and skills management are the pillars for the business that employs 50 staff and hires freelancers when needed. It has closed its Sydney office and manages all work out of Adelaide with staff trained to be across all projects. New skills are also being tapped into through a 10-week intensive course in collaboration with Flinders University, which will have another intake of ten participants next month. The week, executive producer and co-owner Tony Clark is in Los Angeles presenting at the Ausfilm VFX Showcase.