This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(November 2019) |
Industry | |
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Founded | 17 December 1985 |
Founders |
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Headquarters | Chancery Lane, London, England |
Number of locations | Chicago, Illinois New York City, New York Los Angeles, California Montreal, Quebec Vancouver, British Columbia Mumbai, India Beijing, China |
Products | Visual effects Post-production |
Parent | Cultural Investment Holdings |
Subsidiaries | C3M, Company 3 |
Website | framestore |
The Framestore Limited [1] is a British animation and visual effects studio based on Chancery Lane in London. Formed in 1986, it acquired and subsequently merged with the Computer Film Company in 1997. Framestore specialises in effects for film, television, video games, and other media. It is the largest production house within Europe, employing roughly 2500 staff — 1000 in London, and 1500 across offices in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, Vancouver, Mumbai and Beijing. [2] [3] [4]
Framestore was founded in 1986 by William Sargent and Sharon Reed, together with three friends. [5] Tim Webber joined Framestore in 1988 and led the company's push into digital film and television, developing Framestore's virtual camera and motion rig systems. In 1992, Mike Milne started the CGI department, adding computer-generated animation to the company's range of facilities. [6]
In 1997, Framestore acquired the Computer Film Company, which was one of the UK's first digital film special effects companies, developing technology for digital film scanning, compositing, and output. CFC was founded in London in 1984 by Mike Boudry, Wolfgang Lempp (now CTO at Filmlight) and Neil Harris (Lightworks). CFC's first film was The Fruit Machine , in 1988, which utilised early morphing techniques. [7]
In 2004, Framestore opened their first satellite office in New York City, to focus on advertising. [8] This was followed by another office in Iceland in 2008, which has since been closed and has reopened as a local VFX company, RVX. [9] In 2013 Framestore opened an office in Montreal, followed by another in Los Angeles the same year. [10] [11] [12] In 2014, it launched a production arm. [13]
Early projects for the company include the delivery of its first feature animation project The Tale of Despereaux with Universal; [14] the completion of Europe's first digital intermediate for the film Chicken Run in 2000; [15] contribution of scenes for the 2009 film Avatar , [16] and the completion as a production project of four British feature films which opened in theatres between during 2009 and 2010. [17]
In November 2016, Framestore agreed to let the Shanghai-based Cultural Investment Holdings Co acquire 75% of it for £112.50 million. [18] The company worked on projects such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them , Beauty and the Beast , and Paddington 2. [19] In April 2017, Framestore opened a third US location, in Chicago, Illinois. [20]
The company also worked on the 2017 film Darkest Hour directed by Joe Wright, working out of the Montreal facility of Framestore to create historically accurate backdrops for 85 shots in the film, including battle scenes. [21]
The team created around 300 shots for the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049 , with Framestore winning a special visual effects award at the 2018 British Academy Film Awards. [22] They have also worked on Black Mirror , creating props such as the 60s-style spaceship in the premiere of the fourth season. [23]
Framestore has been awarded two Scientific and Technical Academy Awards, and 14 Primetime Emmys. In 2008, Framestore won their first Oscar for Best Visual Effects for the film The Golden Compass ; they also won the BAFTA Award for that film the same year. Framestore was also nominated for Oscars in 2009 ( The Dark Knight ) [24] and again in 2010 ( Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 ). [25]
Tim Webber was the VFX supervisor on Gravity (2013), and the techniques involved in the film realised by Webber and the Framestore team took three years to complete. [26] The team won the best visual effects awards BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects at the 67th British Academy Film Awards, and the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects award at the 86th Academy Awards. [27]
The company then won both the Academy Award [28] and BAFTA [29] for Best Visual Effects in 2018 for its work on Blade Runner 2049.
In advertising the team has also won major awards including Cannes Lions, British Television Advertising Awards, Clios, D&AD and others. [30]
The company's R&D team spun off to create the technology company Filmlight, which in 2010 received four Scientific Academy Awards. [31]
Framestore won the 2020 BAFTA TV Craft Awards for Special, Visual & Graphic Effects for its extensive work on the HBO / BBC series His Dark Materials (TV series). [32]
Framestore has collaborated with companies and advertising agencies to create trade characters, and also created an attempted photorealistic computer-generated Audrey Hepburn for a Galaxy chocolate advert. [33] A combination of elements including body doubles, motion capture, FACS and rendering software called Arnold were used to mimic the appearance of the actress 20 years after her death. The advert drew press attention both for the cutting-edge technology utilized and the ethical implications of using a person's likeness posthumously for commercial purposes. [34] [35] [36]
Wētā FX, formerly known as Weta Digital, is a New Zealand-based digital visual effects and animation company based in Miramar, Wellington. It was founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk in 1993 to produce the digital special effects for Heavenly Creatures. The company went on to produce some of the highest-grossing films ever made, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water. Considered one of the most influential film companies of the 21st century, Wētā FX has won several Academy Awards and BAFTAs. The company is named after the New Zealand wētā, one of the world's largest insects, which was historically featured in the company logo.
Sir Roger Alexander Deakins is an English cinematographer. He is the recipient of five BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography, and two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography from sixteen nominations. He has collaborated multiple times with directors the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve. His best-known works include The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Fargo (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Skyfall (2012), Sicario (2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and 1917 (2019), the last two of which earned him Academy Awards.
Animal Logic is an Australian animation and visual effects digital studio based at Disney Studios in Sydney, New South Wales in Australia, Vancouver in Canada, and Rideback Ranch in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1991, Animal Logic has produced visual effects and animation for feature films such as the Academy Award-winning Happy Feet, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Walking with Dinosaurs 3D,The Lego Movie andPeter Rabbit. The company was also recognised for its work as lead visual effects vendor on Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which won Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects at the 3rd AACTA Awards ceremony. In 2018, Peter Rabbit was presented with a range of accolades, including the AACTA Award for Best Visual Effects or Animation, and Australian Production Design Guild Awards (APDG) in Visual Effects Design and Drawing, Concept Illustration & Concept Models for Screen. Most recently, the company has produced work for the Warner Animation Group's The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel. It is a subsidiary of Netflix.
Rhythm & Hues Studios was an American visual effects and animation company that received the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1995 for Babe, in 2008 for The Golden Compass, and in 2013 for Life of Pi. It also received four Scientific and Technical Academy Awards.
Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. is a Canadian visual effects and computer animation studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and Montreal, Quebec, with an additional office on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California. SPI is a unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Motion Picture Group.
Technicolor Creative Studios UK Limited, doing business as The Mill, is a British VFX production company and creative studio headquartered in London, England, with three offices in the United States, three others in Europe and three in Asia. It is owned by Technicolor Creative Studios. The Mill produces real-time visual effects, animation, moving images, design, experiential, and digital projects for the advertising, games, and music industries.
DNEG is a British visual effects, computer animation and stereo conversion studio that was founded in 1998 in London, and rebranded as DNEG in 2014 after a merger with Indian VFX company Prime Focus; it was named after the letters "D" and "Neg" from their former name.
Scanline VFX is a global visual effects and animation company founded 1989 in Munich. The studio is led by VFX Supervisor Stephan Trojansky. The company has 7 locations including Munich, Stuttgart, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, London, and Seoul.
Cinesite is an independent, multinational business which provides services to the media and entertainment industries. Its head office in London opened for business in 1994, initially offering services in visual effects for film and television, subsequently expanding to include animation.
Bill Westenhofer is an American visual effects supervisor. He worked for Rhythm and Hues Studios until its closure in 2013.
Escape Studios is a British visual effects academy situated and headquartered in North Greenwich, London, offering short courses and degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Escape Studios' primary offering includes study programmes in Visual Effects (VFX), Game Art and Animation, with short courses available in Motion Graphics. Since the foundation of Escape Studios in 2002, more than 4,000 students have passed through its doors, moving into jobs in the animation and visual effects industries.
Craig Barron is an American visual effects artist and creative director at Magnopus, a media company that produces visual development and virtual production services for motion pictures, television, museums and multimedia platforms.
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Gregory S. Butler is an Academy Award-winning American visual effects supervisor. He graduated from Suffield High School in 1989 and afterwards entered Hampshire College. Despite his initial plans to study history, a work-study job with the audiovisual equipment in the library made him interested in film production. Butler graduated in 1993 with a major in film, television and theater design. Afterwards he moved to California to work for Industrial Light and Magic for 9 months, where after intern work he managed to become an assistant in the effects department, starting with assistant credits in The Mask and Forrest Gump. Following a job at Rocket Science Games until the company's bankruptcy in 1996, Butler went to Tippett Studio and did effects work in Starship Troopers and My Favorite Martian, rising up to a technical director job, and Cinesite for Practical Magic. While reluctant at the requirement of moving to New Zealand, Butler was convinced by his writer-actor brother to jump at the opportunity of working for Weta Digital in The Lord of the Rings. Among his achievements was working on the creation of Gollum. for which he was awarded a Visual Effects Society Award.
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