Beyond Harry Potter: House of the Rising Sun

In this year’s Encore Power 50 list VFX company Rising Sun Pictures’ CEO Michael Taylor placed 38 courtesy of Hollywood blockbusting clients. Taylor tells Colin Delaney how thinking smaller will see him and RSP climb the extra 37 rungs.

Harry Potter boards his broomstick and flies onto our screens for the final time this month, as the second installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes to life. However, Potter’s wand-wielding is a mere parlour-trick compared to the true magic behind the films, which are in part, courtesy of Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures. Though a long way from Hogwarts, they’ve had a hand in all the last five Harry Potters.

Rising Sun’s relatively new CEO (as of early 2010) Michael Taylor can’t talk too much about the work they did on the final instalment of Deathly Hallows, except that it was a large body of work, of which the last of it was only shipped out of the building a couple of weeks ago.

“We breathed a big sigh of relief and we received compliments and kudos from the studio,” says Taylor. 
“I can say from our point of view it was very successful. The Potter series has taken us to a new level on our character work and our creature work and traditionally we haven’t been in that space.”