Glassworks Barcelona: Right Here, Right Now

The future is a scary prospect in Spain at the moment. Most people aren’t thinking about tomorrow; just about how to survive today. I shake hands with Martin Contel, Xavi Tribo and David Gomez as they join me around the meeting room table at the recently opened Barcelona office of post production company Glassworks. The trio’s grasp of English ranges from moderate to not much at all but, as my Spanish/Catalan is limited to the bare essentials (‘una cerveza, por favor’), I can’t really complain.

Post with a pedigree

The spacious, modern office is at the top of a beautiful, period building that overlooks Passeig de Gràcia, Spain’s answer to the Champs-Élysées. But at a time when budgets are going south, companies are shedding staff and, if they’re not going bust, moving to cheaper premises, it doesn’t seem like a particularly good moment to open a new office in what is possibly the country’s most expensive location, does it? “No, definitely not,” says head of 3D, Contel, who acts as translator and does most of the talking. I can’t help but pursue the issue: So...   “…why?” he interrupts. “Because life goes on. You cannot wait five or ten years for the situation to improve. You have to live every day, so why not?” Contel states their case with a smile and a ‘c’est la vie’ shrug as the others nod in agreement.

If they were a bunch of kids starting a brand new business you’d be very concerned but these guys, and Glassworks itself, have a strong pedigree. Gomez, head of 2D, has more than 20 years of experience in VFX and an artistic background, making him a Flame wizard. Contel has worked for post houses across Europe, including The Mill London, and Tribo has worked as technical director and head of R&D for some of the best post companies in Spain (more on him later). The three of them, along with head of production Joan Amat, made a deal with Glassworks CEO Hector Macleod to launch the company’s third office (Amsterdam and London are already well established) and the doors opened in August of last year.

Small is sustainable

Currently in Spain, work is scarce for everyone. In such a competitive market can Glassworks Barcelona offer something different? “We think we offer quality instead of quantity, because post production companies here tend to grow bigger and bigger and they work more or less like a factory,” says Contel. “We try to think of ourselves more like a small shop; we care for every single project. I think that’s how we define ourselves.”

We take a tour of the office; its shell is a 100-ish-year-old relic with large, clean, almost empty rooms. It doesn’t look like much, but it does the business, the kit that has been installed in the two Flame suites and the 3D/CG department is state-of-the-art. “It’s really small compared to the monsters [big companies] in London but I think in this moment in Spain it’s better to be small and sustainable,” says Contel.

So far, Glassworks has been surviving thanks to work coming in from abroad, particularly from Russia and China. “We’ve been lucky. We don’t know how but they contact us, it’s a big surprise,” confesses Contel as Gomez starts screening some of the work. There are nice commercials for the aforementioned foreign clients, as well as a film for local beer Estrella Damm that features the revered Barcelona football team, but it’s not until they show me their current project that they get really excited. The room falls silent and the trio’s eyes light up as they play the promo they’re working on for French band Justice, helmed by Barcelona directing trio CANADA. It’s a huge job but one that has the potential to look amazing – and help put Glassworks Barcelona on the map. “It’s like a movie,” comments Contel as it ends. There are cheesy grins and giggles all round as they practically lick their lips, seemingly fantasising about the finished product. “It’s gonna be a hard five weeks from today till the deadline,” he adds with smile, relishing the challenge ahead.

And that’s what Glassworks is all about – the challenge ahead. This is a company looking to the future, not wallowing in the depression of the present. It’s most evident in Xavi’s Lab, a special projects division of the company run by Tribo. During his career in R&D, Tribo, among other achievements, developed the first digital cinema viewing system in Europe for Paul Newman’s Where The Money Is in 2001 and Europe’s first stereo image processor in 2008.

Kinecting with new tech

Under Tribo’s guidance Glassworks offers clients projection mapping, interactive installations, holograms, stereography and other such wonders, as well as bespoke technology. Recently they built a special photo booth for an office party that used a volumetric sensor, a Canon 600D SLR camera, TecPro LED lighting panels and a face detection algorithm to automatically capture pictures of guests that were beamed to a monitor in another part of the office, where they could be browsed in a Minority Report style (waving hands through the air) via Xbox Kinect. “People were like, ‘wow!’. They love this kind of thing but we have to teach them that they could make a campaign based on this technology,” enthuses Tribo. “Last week Microsoft announced that by next year, they’ll use this kind of technology in Windows. Why wait a year or two until it’s common to everybody? We’re offering it now.”

While the technology is advanced, the proposition is simple. “Now we are looking at what the real needs of our clients are,” says Tribo. “Agencies are interested in interactive events because TVCs are so old. They don’t have the same impact as if you do a projection on a building or something interactive.”

We shake hands again and the guys give me one last smile as I head out the door, but I know that it won’t even have time to close behind me before they’re back in those Flame suites, working on that Justice promo… working on the future.