Hybride – The Ubisoft Studio That Helped Bring The Force Awakens to Life

You might not know its name, but if you’ve seen any blockbuster movies over the past couple of years, you definitely know its work. Hybride, a Ubisoft-owned studio based in Quebec, is a key player in the digital VFX industry, and with the immense success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it will have contributed its expertise to three of the top five highest-grossing movies of all time, not to mention several other huge international productions.

Not a bad place to end up for a group that got its start working on special effects for TV commercials. “We’ll have been in the business of doing VFX for 25 years starting next summer,” says Pierre Raymond, president and head of operations at Hybride. “Soon after [we started], we were able to have access to a computer that could handle higher resolutions, which allowed us to migrate from advertisements to film.”

Hybride got its feet wet with Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic in 1997, and within four years, the studio found itself producing VFX shots for Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids – a movie celebrated for its intricate mixture of special-effects and live-action shots. En fait, Hybride’s ongoing relationship with Rodriguez was a fruitful one. The studio would go on to provide its expertise on several of the director’s future projects as well, including the Spy Kids sequels, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and 2005’s Sin City – a film that ultimately set Hybride on a path to working on some of the world’s biggest blockbusters.

“During [this period], we were doing a lot of film, and we introduced some benchmarks in the industry – like Sin City – because of the image process and the overall look of that movie,” says Raymond. “We were very involved in that kind of special effects treatment. Because of Sin City, people reached out to us and asked to do the same thing, but with a different look, for the image processing on 300. These two films were quite important, and generated a wave of attention in our industry.”

“This is also when Ubisoft made a connection with us,” Raymond adds. “We established that both parties were sharing the same audience: players and viewers. We started up a discussion where we said it might be interesting for us to work together.”

That discussion led to Hybride becoming part of Ubisoft, as both companies realized they could benefit from each other’s expertise. "Pendant longtemps, we were looking to be involved on the production side, and not only function as a service company,” says Raymond. “We realized that Ubisoft is a story generator, a storyteller. It was a good fit for us to not only provide a service – which we still do – but to be strongly connected and be a part of the inside, instead of doing a service from the outside.”

The first product of this new partnership was Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, a forward-thinking, YouTube-only prequel to the events that transpired in Assassin’s Creed II. It was a unique project for the time that grew out of Hybride’s experience with its visual treatments for Sin City and 300, and a desire to learn more about games. Meanwhile, Ubisoft gained valuable insight into the world of filmmaking.

From there, Hybride only grew, becoming a contributor for VFX on a variety of blockbuster films, including Avatar, The Hunger Games, and its sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. “Avatar was perfect because we were very knowledgeable on 3D stereoscopic movies, and they had an overload at the time. So they were looking for a company that had a pretty good demo reel, but also one that didn’t need to learn the job,” Raymond says.

“Most of the animators and artists are in the [Effets visuels] field because they saw Star Wars when they were younger.”

But it wasn’t until they reunited with Guillermo Del Toro on Pacific Rim in 2013 that a budding professional relationship opened additional doors. “We were approached by Industrial Light & Magic to do very complicated graphics on Pacific Rim,” Raymond explains. “We started doing that for them, and it became clear that we’d developed a great relationship, and share the same point of view on many topics. It was a great experience, and we ended up doing seven movies with them.”

One of those movies is the fourth-highest-grossing movie of all time, Monde Jurassic. Une autre? The number-one-grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office, and the third globally: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a dream come true for Hybride and its staff. “It was a unique experience working on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You need to realize that most of the animators and artists in the VFX and CG business are in that field because they saw Star Wars when they were younger,” Raymond says. “And it hit them tremendously. This is why, when the project arrived, we were very excited, but I will say we were very impressed by the level of polishing required on this project.”

The hard work paid off. One of The Force Awakens’ five Academy Award nominations is for its visual effects. “There was a lot of pressure on everybody involved to produce a movie like that with the high expectations, but our team was focused on giving its best, which we do on all movies,” he adds. “But on this particular film, I will say that it was something very special, because the franchise was obviously up and running, but there was such a big gap between [Episode III and Episode VII] that the CGI technology [available to us had] improved tremendously.”

While the team waits to see if its contributions on Star Wars will help score it an Oscar, Raymond points out that the team is still plenty busy, working to keep its reputation as a visual effects studio that’s continually improving and pushing into new and exciting territory. “We just finished an entire package for crowd animation on Warcraft, which is going to be released next summer,” he says. “It’s probably one of the first times that people will see crowds animated like that.”

Quite impressive for a small studio that got its start in commercials.

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