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Company type | Private |
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Industry | Visual effects, CGI animation |
Headquarters | El Segundo, Los Angeles, California, United States [1] |
Number of locations | United States, Canada, India, Malaysia, Taiwan |
Number of employees | 1,400 |
Parent | Prana Studios |
Website | www |
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. [2]
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early 2013. It was then purchased by an affiliate of Prana Studios, 34x118 Holdings, LLC, but retained the same name.
Rhythm & Hues Studios was established in Los Angeles, California in 1987 by former employees of Robert Abel and Associates (John Patrick Hughes, [3] Pauline Ts'o, Keith Goldfarb, Cliff Boule, Frank Wuts and Charles Gibson). [4] The company used its own proprietary software for its photo-realistic character animation/visual effects—as well as for those that are more stylized.
In 1998, Rhythm & Hues Studios developed a video game titled Eggs of Steel: Charlie's Eggcellent Adventure for the PlayStation.
In 1999, Rhythm & Hues Studios acquired visual effects house VIFX from 20th Century Fox. [5]
Director Ang Lee approached Rhythm & Hues in August 2009 to discuss a planned film adaptation of the fantasy novel Life of Pi . [6] [7] R&H VFX (Visual Effects) Supervisor Bill Westenhofer noted that Lee "knew we had done the lion in the first Narnia movie. He asked, 'Does a digital character look more or less real in 3D?' We looked at each other and thought that was a pretty good question." [8] He also stated that during these meetings, Lee said, "'I look forward to making art with you.' This was really for me one of the most rewarding things I've worked on and the first chance to really combine art with VFX. Every shot was artistic exploration, to make the ocean a character and make it interesting we had to strive to make it as visually stunning as possible." [9]
By 2012, the company had become a global one, with offices and artists in India (the Mumbai suburb of Malad and HITEC City which is a part of Hyderabad), Malaysia (Cyberjaya just outside Kuala Lumpur), Canada (Vancouver), and Taiwan (Kaohsiung). [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
Rhythm & Hues spent a year on research and development, "building upon its already vast knowledge of CGI animation" to develop the tiger. [16] Artist Abdul Rahman in the Malaysian branch underscored the global nature of the effects process, saying that "the special thing about Life of Pi is that it was the first time we did something called remote rendering, where we engaged our cloud infrastructure in Taiwan called CAVE (Cloud Animation and Visual Effects)". [17]
The resulting film, Life of Pi , was released in theaters in November 2012, and was a critical and commercial success. The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine suggested that, "Life of Pi can be seen as the film Rhythm & Hues has been building up to all these years, by taking things they learned from each production from Cats & Dogs to Yogi Bear, integrating their animals in different situations and environments, pushing them to do more, and understanding how all of this can succeed both visually and dramatically." [18]
On February 11, 2013, Rhythm & Hues Studios filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, three months after Life of Pi was released.
On March 29, 2013, an affiliate of Prana Studios, 34x118 Holdings, LLC, won the bidding on Rhythm and Hues in a bankruptcy auction. [19] The sale was "valued at about $30 million". [20] . In February 2015, founders Hughes, Goldfarb, and Tso were sued for having “pillaged” the VFX house, including conflicted technology and real estate transfers. [3] As of January 2024, the outcome of the lawsuit hasn't been made public.
After the bankruptcy and sale, Rhythm and Hues continued to successfully work on award-winning film, television, and themed entertainment projects, winning multiple Emmy and Visual Effects Society awards for their work on Game of Thrones .
Framestore Limited(The) is a British animation and visual effects studio based in 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.
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.
Richard Baneham is an Irish animator and visual effects supervisor, who has worked on several film series, including The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the Chronicles of Narnia films and the Avatar franchise. Amongst other awards, Baneham has received a BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects and an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2009, both for his work on Avatar, and a further Academy Award in 2023, for visual effects on Avatar: The Way of Water.
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.
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.
Pixomondo (PXO) is an Academy and Emmy award-winning international visual effects and virtual production company with studios in Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and London. The company provides virtual production and visual effects for feature films, television, and commercials. As of 2019, PXO employs over 655 people worldwide.
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.
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Bill Westenhofer is an American visual effects supervisor. He worked for Rhythm and Hues Studios until its closure in 2013.
Life of Pi is a 2012 adventure-drama film directed and produced by Ang Lee and written by David Magee. Based on Yann Martel's 2001 novel of the same name, it stars Suraj Sharma in his film debut, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Rafe Spall, Gérard Depardieu and Adil Hussain in lead roles. The storyline revolves around two survivors of a shipwreck who are on a lifeboat stranded in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days. One is a sixteen-year-old Indian boy named Pi Patel and the other is a ferocious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
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.
Prana Studios, Inc. was an American computer animation and visual effects company, founded in 2005 in Los Angeles, United States, with a wholly owned subsidiary in Mumbai, India.
Blacknorth is an animation and visual effects (VFX) studio based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was founded in 2009 by Kris Kelly and Evelyn McGrath, with the latter leaving in 2013.
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