A month ago, on Friday, February 21, technicolor employees started to warn that it was in terrible financial problems and who could (and did) close on Monday. The stunning collapse of the iconic age -old company sent shock waves through the industry and meets its brands and thousands of employees around the world, as well as their customers.
Paris headquarters Technicolor had been reorganized several times in recent years and when it was closed, it was the parent company of VFX Giant MPC, Commercial VFX Studio The Mill, Mikros Animation and Technicolor Gaming. Nobody had his head office in the US, but they all maintained domestic studio operations or contact points.
“So, the place where we had cast the majority of our professional career and passion – our creative house – had disappeared,” says Robert Sethi, who was executive director at the base of Los Angeles in Los Angeles. But he and extra members of the American leadership of the mill were not ready to give up the team behind what was long considered at the best commercial VFX brands in the world. A group of them connected to each other and joined forces with Dream Machine FX, a group holding for VFX brands, to launch a new company called ARC Creative. A month later, members of the American leadership team of the mill shared Variety Their personal stories and memories from the period of 72 hours by receiving a notification of the demise from Technicolor to launch the launch of Arc Creative in the midst of a chaotic and emotional weekend. Technicolor was contacted for this story.
Members of the ARC Creative Team share that after receiving a message from Technicolor, who on Friday afternoon with David Li, chairman of Dream Machine FX, the company behind VFX brands such as important looking pirates, whose recent credits ‘Shogun’ include. The meeting was hastily arranged by Niklas Jacobson, co-founder of ILP and a Dream Machine partner.
“I go back 25 years with several important people at Dream Machine. Yafei Wu and Niklas Jacobson, the founders of ILP, and I started our career together in Sweden in 2000,” says Sethi. In the close VFX community, other leaders at the mill also had ties with individuals at Dream Machine, including Li. The mill was founded in 1990 in London and grew into a globally recognized VFX and creative leader for short form of work in areas such as commercials, marketing and games. It was taken over by Technicolor in 2015.
The individuals say they have explained their situation to Li, and together they started working to find a way forward, even in the midst of increasing disorder.
“By the time we get rid of the call with David, the news has already leaked that Technicolor is being closed and that everyone was fired. As you think that the next 12 hours are absolute chaos, talking to the crew, getting hectic phone calls from customers, all trying to find out if this dream machine could even be possible,” Ald
The customers of the mill, it seems, did not hear directly from Technicolor, but rather heard of his perilous situation through the press or colleagues in the industry. Von Rahl says that the Mill team also collaborated with customers that weekend to help them pick up their assets, including production projects.
“We called the crew that just received warning messages and asked them to come in and to help us prepare material back on customers so that they could finish their productions,” she recalls. “I strike for a moment. Jacky Gilson, the head of the production of EA, called and I immediately started to walk through the plan about how we had a team the entire weekend to touch their deadline and she stopped in the middle of the sense of saying:” I called to see if you’re in order. “
Gavin Wellsman, executive creative director at the Mill New York, reveals that there were other challenges in trying to create a company in the midst of closure. “During the weekend, Senior Technicolor managers – the same one who had had the wheel all the time and some of whom had decided only a few months earlier in the last town hall that Technicolor had become an angle – tried to launch comparable companies with private equitybacking, which created even more confusion for staff,” he reveals.
Wellsman was on a family vacation when he got the news. “I was shocked and destroyed. I was completely aware of the financial problems of Technicolor, but I never thought for a second that the mill would ever close its doors,” he says, adding that he spent on the phone that Friday, called staff and customers. “After I had spent my entire career at the mill, my first thought was the staff and their families, from the runners to the MDs, we were all relieved of our duties and left without any dismissal, so we knew we had to make a plan and act quickly.” During those calls he also heard of the potential chance with Dream Machine. “I ran back to Brooklyn to get to work.”
Sethi says that he and Von Rahl were on the phone again by Saturday morning with Li, “who had put a possible path forward. We had worked tirelessly the night before – drawing up a business plan, exploring every angle, and trying to form what this could be. And means of subsistence.”
Angela Lupo, who was the director of the New York of the Mill, says that with Li’s green light, they started sharing the plan with artists, “communicating that we might have a path out of the fire and a temperature about who was in it. Von Rahl adds that the logistics of starting the company was lost of the end of the month” “This was the end of the month” To set up payroll and the team on board.
Over the years, the work of the mill has been recognized with countless awards, including Cannes Lions, Clios and Visual Effects Society Awards, in addition to a VFX Oscar for his work on ‘Gladiator’ from 2000. But now they needed a new brand. Sethi says that they chose Arc Creative because it “meant something to us, because we not only tried to build a proverbial boat in a weekend, but this was a big hinge in the story for all of us.” Creative “was” creative “because that is the passage line of all the talent.” Mill Creative Director Ilya Abulkhavov outlined company logos in the middle of the name discussions.
The mill leaders believe that there was trust in a close team that was built during their career, which also helped to launch the effort in the midst of the technicolor closure. “Trust had been gradually eroding and I think that at the moment with the sudden notification of closure, confidence had now completely disappeared with business management,” Wellsman suggests. ‘On the other hand, with the four of us [The Mill leaders in New York and L.A.]The staff had seen us insist on change over the years. I never thought I would be confronted with a decision to start a business within 72 hours and make the biggest decision of my career. The message in my head that stood on the loop was ‘the staff deserves better’ and although I was also high and dry together with everyone else, I felt that it was my duty to try to keep as much as possible of the core team together. ”
According to Von Rahl, ARC Creative was able to hire around 100 people full-time and at the same time offer freelance work on another 50 artists than half of the American team of the mill and plan to retain their Bicastal operations. They are currently working in Temp -Ruimtil while they are looking for permanent locations in Los Angeles and New York. Lupo recognized Postworks New York, which shared their space, allowing ARC to quickly work with customers. Von Rahl reports that Arc Creative currently has 21 projects, thanks to relationships that they had developed over the years, also with electronic art and Amazon.
In the front Variety Coverage, sources that were employed by Technicolor (both in the past and in the moment of the closure, although not mill staff) argued that maladministration was the main cause of the collapse of technicolor, although VFX Pros also acknowledge that some bad decisions were probably exacerbated by an already challenging business model. The industry continues to suffer from low margins and is strongly influenced by tax credits with post-production work that go from one part of the world to another in an endless search for the best stimuli. And just like the rest of Hollywood, in recent years the impact of Pandemic Shutdowns and the double strikes of 2023 by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the company further challenged.
At noon on Monday, February 24, the mill staff were walked out of their offices and the doors were closed. That day, thousands of employees from all over the world lost at Technicolor ownership of their job when the company began to close. (Since that day, Technicolor Games has been taken over by global language translation and AI Tech Business Transpermect.)
Arc Creative was then hurriedly announced. Von Rahl says that community support has given its optimism, “from our editorial friends who offer us to get into their space, ring production companies to say that they will support and manage work, an offer from a desk to help write strategy, call to Amazon and ask to be the first customer.”
“We were overwhelmed by the outpouring and love and support of friends, customers and colleagues who could not believe that we were coming so fast,” Wellsman recalls. “I think most people who responded really needed something good to get out of this absolute disaster.”
“I had mixed emotions. I was still in shock, a little nervous but also extremely enthusiastic for the future.”