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Steal an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes of this exciting production services company | #CompanySpotlight

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It's always fascinating to step behind a camera and look at how things are actually made. This is especially true when you encounter a team like G6 MoCo.

With Hollywood-level production and specialised in high-speed motion control, tracking vehicle and virtual production, G6 MoCo is a visual engineering company with a big heart and a huge passion for anything filmmaking. Their expertise and offering is quite niche, but this did not stop the team from gaining traction in the way they do business, growing at a steady pace and always unafraid to explore emerging technologies.

Such open-minded, enthusiastic approach about the production scene is undoubtedly what's helped the team excel over time, and as they are moving into the realm of Virtual Production, it's hard to imagine anything other than stellar success for this tight-knit Manchester-based team.

In this Company Spotlight, we are learning more about the talented folks at G6 Motion Control with Rammy Anwar, Founder & CEO.

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How was your company born and where are you based?

G6 MoCo was inspired by trying to create shots that seemed impossible. We developed our own cinema robot that allowed us to achieve these shots. Since then we’ve expanded into other offerings like virtual production, tracking vehicle and steadicam solutions.

Our office and studio are based in Manchester at The Sharp Project but we frequently travel to London and abroad for shoots.

What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?

Our business is quite niche so finding people who have an engineering mindset and understand filmmaking, ‘visual engineers’ as we like to call ourselves, is probably the biggest challenge. We are working with emerging technology to create solutions that don’t yet exist, so having the right skillset and approach is essential. Explaining what we are capable of to other filmmakers can also be a challenge as this space is so new. We’re lucky to have an insanely talented team and have recently taken on 4 new hires this year.

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Which was the first huge success that you can remember?

Not long after we started G6, Man City approached us to produce several films to celebrate winning 4 trophies in one season. The main video was a trophy lift like no other. Using our state of the art robotic arm camera technology and ultra slow motion 4K cameras, we created various scenes with the footballers celebrating and had the players appear multiple times in one continuous shot. We only had 10 minutes with the players so everything had to be perfect - no pressure! The super high precision with the robot allowed us to pre-program the shots so we had everything down to a tee. We stitched the clips together so it looked like one seamless shot in the video. It was a crazy video to produce with lots of changes along the way and delivering the final video on the same day. The team nailed it and the videowas Man City’s most successful social media post that year. They even made a behind the scenes video for CityTV.

What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?

We’re moving into Virtual Production which is one of the most exciting spaces in the industry! We already have a fully integrated LED video wall solution with Unreal games engine and our cinema robots. It’s essentially a much better version of a green screen with real-time live environments on the screen. This means you can have multiple locations on one shoot and be anywhere! Normally there’s a 7-12 frame delay when the camera moves with the environment on the video wall but we’ve developed our own solution so this works with no lag at all. Using this groundbreaking technology with our robots gives us a really strong offering - the opportunities are huge!

We’ve also started working on Hollywood sets which is beyond our wildest dreams. I think this next year will see us continue to branch out from commercials & content into more long-form film content. 

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Can you explain your team’s creative process?

Often we are approached by a Director with a vision but they don’t know how to produce a particular shot or if it’s even possible. Our role is to collaborate with them on the creative concept and bring lots of ideas to the table of what’s possible with our specialist tools. We understand the full scope of possibilities, capabilities and limits of our tools and can custom make all kinds of solutions, pneumatics and props. Our creative team work as a translator between the technical and the Director. We want to make sure they feel at ease working with us and new technologies so it’s not overwhelming.  Even when we’re hired for rental jobs, we bring a lot of creative input - the possibilities are endless!

How does your team remain inspired and motivated?

It’s hard not to be inspired when you’re working with such cutting edge technology. We’re constantly coming up with new ideas to use our tools for next level visuals and storytelling. We’ve built such an eclectic and eccentric team - we always ask ourselves how can we do this? How can we make it even crazier?

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How has COVID-19 affected your company?

More than half of our company lifetime has seen lockdowns and setbacks. We knew we couldn’t control the situation, so we decided to embrace it. We did lots of R&D and bought new equipment to play with. We have our own studio so we were able to do covid-safe tabletop product shoots until the restrictions were eased and offer remote production. Things are pretty much back to normal now and we’ve been growing faster than ever. We now have a covid trained supervisor in our team to keep everything safe on set and day-to-day. 

Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?

Steve Giralt has been a big inspiration of ours for visual engineering, especially when we were getting started. We’ve pushed ourselves to produce visuals that are on the same level as his.

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What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?

Never stop innovating and thinking about the next step to grow your business. We are constantly thinking of how else we can use our solutions and what tool we want next. I think this growth mindset is key and really motivating for the team.

How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)

We’re lucky that most of our work comes from direct enquiries. What we do is so unique, it’s spread like wildfire in the industry so a lot of it has been word of mouth from other production companies. Our Instagram account has also gained a lot of traction, people love seeing the behind the scenes how we made our shots!

What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?

We’re at the cutting edge of the next revolution in filmmaking. We’d love to bring more creative productions here to the north of England.

Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?

We find a lot of inspiration from the art world. YouTube and Instagram are great visual mediums, and of course platforms like Creative Pool that showcase the latest creative work in the industry. 

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